^egcurds  of  tJie  J^xeciitoi^s, 


EMILY  G.  WILLISTON. 
M.  F.  DICKINSON,  JR.. 
E.  H.  SAWYER. 
A.  L.  WILLISTON. 


A    DISCOURSE 


COMMEMORATIVE    OF 


HON.    SAMUEL    WILLISTON,  / 


DELITERED    IN    THE 


PAYSOK   CHURCH  AT   EASTHAMPTON, 


September   13,   1874, 


AND    ALSO    IV 


THE  COLLEGE  CHURCH  AT  AMHERST,   SEPTEMBER  20. 


By    W.    S.    TYLER, 

WILLISTON  PROFESSOR   OF  CREEK    IN  AMHERST   COLLEGE. 


SPRUNGFIELD,   MASS.  : 

CLARK    W.    BRYAN   AND    COMPANY,    PRINTERS. 
1874. 


n 


DISCOURSE. 


As  we  gather  in  this  sacred  place  and  come  under 
the  shadow  of  this  solemn  occasion,  the  very  air 
we  breathe  seems  to  be  full  of  voices.  And  it  is 
not  the  noise  and  tumult  of  the  world — it  is  not 
the  speech  of  men  or  of  angels — it  is  the  voice  of 
God  that  speaks  to  us.  And  as  we  listen  and  strive 
to  hear  and  learn  what  He  would  say  unto  us,  I 
seem  to  hear,  uttered  as  distinctly  almost  as  with 
an  audible  voice,  such  words  as  these  :  God  only  is 
great ;  God  only  is  wise ;  there  is  none  good  but  one, 
that  is  God.  All  flesh  is  as  grass,  and  all  the  glory 
of  man  as  the  flower  of  grass.  The  grass  wither- 
eth,  and  the  flower  thereof  falleth  away ;  but  the 
word  of  the  Lord  endureth  forever.  Let  not 
the  wise  man  glory  in  his  wisdom,  neither  let 
the  mighty  man  glory  in  his  might ;  let  not  the 
rich  man  glory  in  his  riches,  but  let  him  that 
glorieth,  glory  in  this,  that  he  understandeth  and 
knoweth  me  ;    that  I  am  the   Lord   which  exercise 


4  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

loving-kindness,  judgment  and  righteousness,  in  the 
earth.  The  righteous  shall  llourish  like  the  palm 
tree ;  he  shall  grow  like  a  cedar  in  Lebanon. 
Those  that  be  planted  in  the  house  of  the  Lord, 
shall  flourish  in  the  courts  of  our  God.  Blessed  is 
the  man  that  feareth  the  Lord ;  that  delighteth 
greatly  in  his  commandments.  Wealth  and  riches 
shall  be  in  his  house,  and  his  righteousness  en- 
dureth  forever.  A  good  man  showeth  favor,  and 
lendeth ;  he  will  guide  his  affairs  with  discretion. 
He  hath  dispersed ;  he  hath  given  to  the  poor ; 
his  righteousness  endureth  forever ;  his  horn  shall 
be  exalted  with  honor.  There  is  that  scattereth, 
and  yet  increaseth ;  and  there  is  that  withhold- 
eth  more  than  is  meet,  but  it  tendeth  to  pov- 
erty. The  liberal  soul  shall  be  made  fat,  and  he 
that  watereth,  shall  be  watered  also  himself.  Give, 
and  it  shall  be  given  unto  you ;  good  measure, 
pressed  down  and  shaken  together  and  running 
over,  shall  men  give  into  your  bosom.  For  with 
the  same  measure  that  ye  mete  withal,  it  shall  be 
measured  to  you  again.  It  is  required  in  stewards 
that  a  man  be  found  faithful.  Who  then  is  that 
faithful  and  wise  stCAvard,  whom  his  lord  shall 
make  ruler  over  his  household.  Blessed  is  that 
servant  whom  his  lord,  when  he  cometh,  shall  find 


COMMEMOKATIYE     DISCOURSE.  0 

SO  doing.  Of  a  truth,  I  say  unto  you,  he  will 
make  him  ruler  over  all  that  he  hath.  Blessed  are 
ye  that  soav  beside  all  waters.  Cast  thy  bread 
upon  the  waters,  for  thou  shalt  find  it  after  many 
days.  If  thou  draw  out  thy  soul  to  the  hungry, 
and  satisfy  the  afflicted  soul ;  then  shall  thy  light 
rise  in  obscurity  and  thy  darkness  be  as  the  noon- 
da}^  And  the  Lord  shall  guide  thee  continually  and 
satisfy  thy  soul  in  drought,  and  make  fat  thy 
bones :  and  thou  shalt  be  like  a  watered  garden 
and  like  a  spring  of  water  whose  waters  fail  not. 
And  they  that  be  of  thee  shall  build  the  old  waste 
places ;  thou  shalt  raise  up  the  foundations  of 
many  generations  ;  and  thou  shalt  be  called,  The 
Repairer  of  the  breach.  The  Restorer  of  paths  to 
dwell  in. 

All  these  Scriptures  are  naturally  suggested  by 
the  occasion  which  has  called  us  together.  They 
are  all  more  or  less  strikingly  illustrated  in  the 
life,  or  impressed  upon  us  by  the  death  of  our 
departed  friend.  God  who,  at  sundry  times,  and 
in  divers  -manners,  wrote  them  in  His  word,  noAV 
repeats  them,  as  it  were,  in  our  ears  by  His  Prov- 
idence. May  He  also,  by  His  Spirit,  write  them 
in  our  hearts.  Either  of  them  might  furnish  a 
suitable  and   profitable  theme  for  our  special  medi- 


6  COMMEMOKATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

tation  at  this  hour.  Each  of  them  has  occurred 
in  rapid  succession  as  a  proper  text  for  this  dis- 
course. But  none  of  them,  perhaps,  expresses  in 
so  few  and  fitting  words  the  characteristic  life-work 
of  Samuel  Williston — the  mission  which  he  seems 
to  have  been  sent  into  the  world  to  accomplish — as 
a  part  of  the  last  passage  which  I  have  read.  It 
is  found  in  the  fifty-eighth  chapter  of  Isaiah,  and 
the  tweKth   verse. 

"  Thou  sJicdt  raise  up  the  foundations  of  many  gen- 
erations ;  and  thou  shalt  he  called,  The  Repairer  of 
the  hreach,  The  Restorer  of  pcdhs  to  dwell  in''  Isa. 
Iviii.  12. 

And  the  lesson  which  the  providence  and  the 
word  of  God  commend  to  our  especial  considera- 
tion at  this  time  is,  The  honor  which  is  due  to  the 
founders  of  institutions,  especially  institutions  of 
education  and  religion,  for  the  benefit  of  many 
generations. 

The   honor   which  is   due   to    such   men  is   seen, 

1.  In  the  high  estimation  in  which  they  have 
always  been  held,  both  by  God  and  by  mankind. 

The  two  names,  most  honored  of  God  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  church  and  the  world,  are  Moses  and 
Christ.  And  these  are  the  names  of  the  founders 
and  lawgivers  of  the  Jewish  and  the  Christian  church. 


COMMEMOKATIYE    DISCOUESE.  7 

Next  in  honor  to  Moses  in  the  Old  Testament, 
stand  David  and  Solomon,  of  whom  the  one  planned 
and  the  other  built  the  temple,  and  both  instituted 
the  worship  of  the  Sanctuary — both  organized  the 
outward  kingdom  of  God  on  earth,  with  its  palace 
on  the  literal  Mount  Zion,  and  its  capital  the 
earthly  Jerusalem.  The  most  illustrious  of  all  the 
foUow^ers  of  Christ  was  Paul,  the  founder  of  so 
large  a  part  of  the  Apostolic  churches.  And  while 
these  men  have  been  so  highly  honored  of  God, 
what  names  have  been  so  widely  known  or  so 
highly  exalted  as  these,  among  men  ?  Who  of  all 
that  have  ever  lived  on  earth,  can  compare  w^ith 
them  in  the  extent,  the  power  or  the  sacredness 
of  their  influence  ? 

In  profane  history,  again,  what  names  have  been 
so  honored  in  all  ages  and  nations,  as  the  found- 
ers of  states,  of  schools,  and  of  religious  institu- 
tions. "  The  true  marshalling  of  the  degrees  of 
sovereign  honors,"  says  Lord  Bacon,  "  are  these : 
Tn  the  first  place  are  Conditores,  founders  of  states. 
In  the  second  place,  are  Legislatores,  lawgivers, 
which  are  sometimes  called  second  founders,  or 
Perpetui  Principes,  because  they  govern  by  their 
ordinances  after  they  are  gone."  Then  follow  in 
regular    gradation    downwards,    in    the    third    place, 


8  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

liberators;    in   the   fourth,  mihtary  defenders;    and 
last,  civil  rulers,  all  of  Avhom  the  great  philosopher 
ranks    below    founders    and    lawgivers.       Orpheus, 
Amphion   and  Epimenides,  among    the   founders  of 
religious  rites  and  mysteries ;    Minos,  Lycurgus  and 
Solon,  among  the  founders  of  states;   and  Socrates, 
Plato  and  Aristotle,  among  the  founders  of  schools, 
must    suffice    as    illustrious    examples   from    ancient 
history.      For  the  time  would  fail  us  to  tell  of  Zo- 
roaster  and  Confucius,  of   Boodha   and  Brahma,  of 
Romulus   and   Numa,  and    the    other  teachers,  law- 
givers   and   institution-founders    of    antiquity,   who 
lived  at  so    early  an  age,  that   the    imagination    of 
men  has   almost   clothed   them  with   the    attributes 
of  gods.      Still   less    can   we    enumerate   the   lesser 
lights  that   organized  governments,  inaugurated  re- 
lio'ions  and  founded   schools,  and  so  extended   their 
influence    and    perpetuated    their    memory    in    the 
later   periods.      In  Mediaeval    and   Modern   history, 
what  o-reater  names  are  there   than  those  of  Alfred 
the  Great  and    Charlemagne,  Washington   and   Jef- 
ferson ;    and    these    are    the    names    of    founders  at 
once  of  states  and  schools,  of  nations  and  colleges, 
of  empires  and  universities.       Such  men  as  Clement 
and    Origen,  the  founders   and    teachers  of   the  far- 
famed    school    of    Chi'istian    learning  at   Alexandria, 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE.  9 

and  of  the  other  catechetical  schools  and  theologi- 
cal seminaries  of  the  early  church,  were  among  the 
chief  of  the  early  Christian  Fathers.  There  are 
no  names  more  hallowed  in  the  Catholic  church 
than  the  founders  of  those  monasteries  which,  with 
all  their  sins,  have  the  merit  of  keeping  learning 
and  religion  alive  through  the  darkness  and  confu- 
sion of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  founders,  too,  of  those 
religious  orders  whose  influence  has  been  felt  to 
the  remotest  bounds  of  Christendom,  what  veneration 
is  felt  for  them  by  all  good  Catholics,  from  age  to 
age.  The  names  of  St.  Benedict,  St.  Dominic,  St. 
Francis,  and  Ignatius  Loyola,  have  been  canonized 
and  embalmed  in  the  religious  societies  which  they 
established.  And  the  founders  of  sects  and  of 
charitable  and  benevolent  associations  are  scarcely 
less  honored  and  revered  among  Protestants.  The 
founders  of  the  libraries,  the  scholarships  and  fel- 
lowships, and  the  separate  colleges  at  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  still  live  in  those  universities;  their 
portraits  and  statues  occupy  the  most  consjDicuous 
places  in  the  halls,  colleges  and  libraries  which 
they  established,  and  their  names  are  still  spoken 
with  pride  and  pleasure,  as  they  have  been  for 
centuries,  by  the  noble  youth  who  enjoy  the  ben- 
efit of    their   liberality.       The    greatest  and  best   of 


10  COMMEMOKATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

England's  kings  have  been  proud  to  identify  their 
memories  with  these  fomidations.  The  good  Queen 
Phihppa  founded  Queen's  College,  and  the  queens 
of  England  have  ever  since  been,  ex  officio,  its 
patronesses.  Christ  Church  College  is  the  proud- 
est monument  of  the  proud  Cardinal  Wolsey — it 
might  well  be  said  to  be  his  only  enduring  monu- 
ment ;  and  the  other  colleges  bear  up  the  names, 
otherwise  little  remembered  and  seldom  spoken,  of 
some  of  the  chief  dignitaries  of  the  church  and  the 
state.  Who  has  not  heard  the  names  of  Bodley 
and  RadclifE  ?  They  are  the  synonyms  of  libraries 
and  books,  wherever  there  are  scholars. 

In  our  own  age  and  country,  there  is  no  surer 
passport  to  immortal  remembrance  than  to  be  iden- 
tified with  the  origin  and  progress  of  those  insti- 
tutions of  learning,  charity  and  religion  which  are 
the  characteristic  and  chief  glory  of  our  times. 
Here  specification  is  needless ;  for  it  were  but  to 
enumerate  the  principal  academies,  colleges  and 
professional  seminaries  of  New  England— the  chief 
charitable  and  religious  as  well  as  literary  and  scien- 
tific foundations  of  the  country,  so  many  of  which 
hallow  and  perpetuate  the  names  of  their  founders. 
Who  can  ever  think  of  American  inissions  without 
being   reminded    of    Worcester    and   Evarts  ?      It  is 


COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE.  11 

honor  enough  for  any  man  to  have  had  anything 
to  do  with  originating  the  Home  Missionary,  Tract, 
Bible,  Temperance  and  Anti-Slavery  Societies.  What 
American  scholar,  aye,  and  what  American  citizen 
has  not  often  repeated  the  names  of  Harvard  and 
Yale  ?  What  educated  man,  nay,  what  intelligent 
man,  woman  or  child  in  the  future  periods  of  our 
history  will  not  be  familiar  with  the  names  of  Phillips 
and  Williston  ? 

The  honor  which  is  due  to  the  founders  of  insti- 
tutions, especially  those  of  learning  and  religion, 
may  be  seen 

2.     In  the  nature  and  value  of  these  institutions. 

An  institution  is  the  embodiment  of  a  principle, 
the  organization  and  thus  the  multiplication  and  ex- 
tension of  a  power,  the  incarnation  and  perpetua- 
tion of  a  life.  Sparta  was  a  perpetuated  Lycurgus 
Athens  was  Solon  embodied  and  endowed  with  a 
kind  of  immortality.  The  Christian  Church  is  the 
body  of  Christ — is  Christ  living,  suffering,  dying, 
rising  again  from  age  to  age,  and  thus  at  length 
triumphing  and  reigning  on  earth  as  in  heaven. 
A  hospital  with  its  succession  of  physicians  and 
nurses,  a  charitable  society  with  its  successive  corps 
of  officers  and  agents  and  its  undying  ministries  to 


12  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

the  poor,  the  sick  and  the  suffering,  is  a  perpetnal 
metempsychosis  of  Howard  the  philanthropist;  only 
it  is  a  larger,  richer,  mightier  Howard  better  trained 
and  better  furnished  for  his  work — the  soul  of  How- 
ard animating  the  body  of  a  hundred-headed  and 
hundred-handed  giant,  and  employing  all  its  heads 
and  all  its  hands  in  agencies  of  beneficence,  and 
that  giant  perchance  vested  not  only  with  ubiquity 
but  with  immortality.  A  school  well  endowed,  and 
so  sustained  from  generation  to  generation,  is  a 
school-master  that  never  dies.  Eugby  is  Arnold 
teaching  and  ruling  in  the  hearts  of  his  pupils  long 
after  Arnold  is  dead.  Phillips  has  ceased  from  his 
labors,  and  his  personal  influence  can  no  longer  be 
traced.  Phillips  Academy  not  only  prolongs  but 
multiplies  his  labors,  not  only  perpetuates  but  en- 
larges his  influence,  not  only  transmits  his  wealth 
but  transmutes  it  into  the  fine  gold  of  a  classical  and 
Christian  education.  For  while  institutions  are  in- 
carnations of  ideas  and  principles,  they  may  be,  and 
frequently  are,  spiritualizations  of  material  forces, 
transfigurations  of  gross  earthly  substances  into 
something  quite  ethereal  and  divine.  An  institu- 
tion, like  a  manufacturing  establishment,  can  put 
in  motion  many  hands  instead  of  one  or  two,  and 
those  of  far  more   delicacy  and  dexterity  than  the 


COMMEMOEATIVE     DISCOURSE.  13 

fingers  of  the  founder.  An  institution  can  perpetu- 
ate the  name  and  the  influence  of  the  intellio-ent 
and  excellent,  but  perhaps  uneducated  and  person- 
ally uninfluential  manufacturer  or  merchant,  in  a 
corps  of  elegant  scholars  and  able  teachers  that  will 
fashion  the  minds,  the  morals  and  the  manners  of 
scores,  perhaps  hundreds  of  youth  in  every  genera- 
tion till  the  end  of  time.  Institutions,  like  skillful 
enginery,  employ  natural  agencies,  subsidize  aux- 
iliary forces,  and  enlist  powers  and  resources  that 
are  more  than  human. 

Institutions  educate  and  control  individual  men. 
They  also  fashion  society,  guide  the  church  and 
govern  the  nation.  Institutions  mark  and  make 
civilization.  Savages  have  no  institutions,  just  as 
they  have  no  machines.  Just  in  proportion  as  civil- 
ization advances,  institutions  become  more  numer- 
ous and  complicated,  more  elevated  and  refined. 
Every  step  of  Chrisiian  civilization  is  marked  and 
maintained,  and  in  no  small  measure  made  by  Chris- 
tian schools,  colleges,  seminaries  of  learning,  and 
institutions  of  charity  and  benevolence.  Institutions 
mark  and  make  progress.  They  link  the  past  with 
the  present,  and  the  present  with  the  future.  They 
constitute  an  open  channel  of  communication — nay, 
a   vital   union    and    communion  between   the    ages. 


14  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

They  enrich  each  generation  with  the  wisdom  and 
virtue  of  previous  generations,  and  make  the  acqui- 
sitions and  resources  of  individuals  the  weaUh  and 
power  of  the  state,  the  age  and  the  race. 

All  these  remarks,  while  they  are  true  of  insti- 
tutions in  general,  apply  with  emphasis  to  institu- 
tions of  learning,  especially  when  sanctified  by 
religion.  These  are  emphatically  the  great  conser- 
vative and  progressive,  civiHzing  and  educating, 
perpetuating  and  transfiguring  powers  of  society ; 
the  living  channels  of  communication  between  the 
Ancient  and  the  Modern,  the  Old  World  and  the 
New,  the  individual  and  his  age  and  race.  They 
transmute  the  gold  and  silver  and  houses  and  lands 
of  the  founder  into  the  true  riches  of  the  mind 
and  heart,  and  then  transmit  them  through  the 
ages  and  nations,  thus  enduing  them  with  something 
like  ubiquity  and  immortality.  They  live  on,  though 
founders  and  teachers  die,  and  even  after  states 
and  nations  have  passed  away ;  as  a  tree  lives  on, 
though  its  leaves  fall  from  year  to  year, — lives 
when  planters  and  owners,  one  after  another,  pass 
away,  and  not  unfrequently  still  lives  when  the  na- 
tion and  race  that  planted  it  and  long  ate  its  fruit, 
have  given  place  to  others.  "Aye  be  planting  a 
tree,"  was  a  precept  of    Scotch   wisdom — if   I   mis- 


COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE.  15 

take  not,  it  was  addressed  to  Jeanie  Deans  hy  her 
father  in  the  Heart  of  Mid  Lothian.  "  Aye  be 
planting  a  tree,  Jeanie ;  it  will  be  growing  when 
you  are  asleep,  it  will  live  Avhen  you  are  dead. 
Those  who  come  after  you  will  sit  under  its  shade 
and  eat  of  its  fruit."  So  an  institution  of  learning 
and  religion  wdll  still  be  growing  and  working 
when  its  founder  has  ceased  to  toil  or  care  for  it 
— will  live  long  after  he  is  laid  in  the  grave ;  it 
will  bear  fruit  at  all  seasons  of  the  year  and  pro- 
duce all  manner  of  fruit,  while,  peradventure,  its 
very  leaves  will  be  for  the  healing  of  the  nations. 
Thus  the  libraries  and  museums  at  Alexandria 
survived  dynasties  and  outlived  the  Grecian  and 
Roman  supremacy,  educating  all  the  while  Jews 
and  Greeks,  Asiatics,  Africans  and  Europeans, 
mediating  between  philosophy  and  revelation,  and 
propagating  learning  and  religion  together  among 
the  leading  minds  of  three  continents.  The  schools 
of  the  Byzantine  grammarians  formed  the  con- 
necting link  between  the  Ancient  and  the  Mod- 
ern civilizations,  as  Constantinople  itself  is  the 
bridge  between  the  East  and  the  West;  and  by  pre- 
serving the  wisdom  of  the  Ancients,  they  gave  rise 
to  the  revival  of  learning  in  Modern  Europe.  Even 
the  monasteries,  with  their  libraries,  kept  alive  the 


16  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

flickering  torch  of  learning  during  the  Dark  Ages, 
and  thus  helped  to  introduce  the  Reformation.  For 
while  institutions  of  learning  are  the  conservators 
of  the  Old,  they  are  no  less  emphatically  the  orig- 
inators of  the  New.  The  revival  of  learning  and 
the  reformation  were  both  born  and  nurtured  in 
the  Universities.  The  earliest  and  greatest  of  the 
Reformers  were  monks  and  professors. 

But  it  is,  above  all,  the  office  of  institutions  of 
learnino;  to  educate :  to  educate  individuals  and  thus 
to  mould  and  fashion  society ;  to  educate  the  mem- 
bers, and  especially  the  officers  of  the  church,  and 
so  to  shape  the  character  and  history  of  the  church 
itself;  to  educate  the  citizens,  and  especially  the 
rulers  of  the  State,  and  so  to  govern  the  State 
and  the  Nation.  They  lay  the  foundations  of  so- 
ciety, government  and  religion.  They  are  truly, 
what  they  are  often  called.  Seminaries,  that  is,  they 
sow  the  seeds  of  ideas  and  principles;  they  shape 
and  train  the  germs  of  private  and  public  life  and  ac- 
tion ;  they  bend  the  twig  of  individual  and  national 
character.  The  higher  seminaries  educate  the  lead- 
ing minds,  and  thus  teach  and  rule  the  masses. 
They  improve  and  perfect  agriculture,  commerce, 
and  all  the  useful  arts  l)y  developing  the  sciences  on 
which  they  are  founded.     They   purify  the  streams 


COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE.  17 

of  political,  social,  moral  and  religious  life,  by  purify- 
ing the  fountain.  Christian  colleges  and  seminaries 
formed  the  character  of  New  England  in  the  forming 
period  of  her  history,  and  New  England,  through 
her  own  schools  and  colleges,  and  those  which  she 
is  founding  all  over  the  land,  is  ruling  the  church  and 
scovernino;  the  nation.  New  Eng-land,  throui>:h  her 
own  colleges  and  seminaries,  and  those  which  she  is 
setting  up  like  light-houses  on  foreign  shores,  is 
carrying  on  the  missionary  work,  and  laying  the 
foundations  of  society  and  government,  education 
and  religion  for  "  many  generations  "  in  every  part 
of  the  world. 

The  honor  which  is  due  to  the  founders  of  in- 
stitutions, especially  those  of  learning  and  religion, 
may  be  seen 

3.  In  the  broad  views,  high  aims,  and  rare  wis- 
dom and  excellence  of  character  by  which  such 
men  must  be  distinguished. 

The  founders  of  states  and  nations,  the  authors 
of  constitutions,  codes  of  law,  and  forms  of  gov- 
ernment, are,  of  course,  few ;  for  few  have  either 
the  opportunity  or  the  capacity  to  inaugurate  such 
institutions.  It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  these 
few  should  have  been   honored  in   all   ages  as  the 

3 


18  COMMEMOEATIVE    DISCOURSE. 

special  favorites  both  of  ecfi'tli  and  heaven.  The 
same  is  true  also  of  the  founders  of  new  rites  and 
forms,  sects  and  creeds  in  religion.  But  there  is 
almost  unlimited  opportunity  to  found  churches, 
schools,  and  all  the  various  institutions  of  educa- 
tion and  religion,  where  they  do  not  exist,  or  exist 
only  in  a  very  imperfect  form.  And  there  are 
more  in  our  day  than  there  ever  were  before,  per- 
haps, who  prize  and  improve  their  privilege  in 
this  respect.  But  they  are  still  few  in  compar- 
ison with  the  many  who  do  not  attain,  or  even 
aspire  to  it  —  very  few,  in  comparison  with  the 
many,  many  wants  of  a  growing  country,  an  ad- 
vancing church  and  a  perishing  world.  And  the 
reason  is  obvious.  It  requires  rare  disinterested- 
ness, and  rare  discernment.  Few  men  have  the 
self-denial  and  self-sacrifice,  and  perhaps  fewer  still 
the  insight  and  the  foresight,  the  far-seeing  sagac- 
ity, and  the  far-reaching  wisdom,  which  must  be- 
long to  the  founders  of  such  institutions.  Most 
men  are  absorbed  in  themselves  or  their  families, 
their  relatives  and  friends.  If  they  do  not  spend 
all  their  energies  and  resources  in  looking  out  for 
themselves  and  their  immediate  connections,  their 
own  church,  their  own  partj^,  or,  at  the  very  largest, 
their    own    country    is    the    extreme    limit   of    their 


COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE.  19 

vision.  At  all  events,  there  must  be  something  local, 
sectional,  partial,  exclusive,  about  an  object  that 
appeals  to  them,  or  it  has  no  charms  for  them; 
and  the  more  narrow  and  exclusive  it  is,  the  more 
attractive  it  will  be  to  nine-tenths  of  mankind. 

Most  men  are  absorbed  in  the  present.  They 
never  think  of  coming  genesations  and  future  ages. 
They  demand  immediate  results,  quick  returns, 
speedy  harvests.  Comparatively  few  will  plant  an 
orchard,  or  a  single  tree  even,  of  which  they  can- 
not expect  themselves  to  gather  the  fruit — still 
fewer  a  forest  for  the  benefit  of  they  know  not 
what  future  generation.  Few  are  capable  of  dis- 
cerning the  oak  in  the  acorn,  and  very  few  have 
the  patience  to  plant  the  acorn  and  watch  and 
wait  for  its  slow  development. 

Most  men  look  only  on  the  outward  appearance, 
and  can  see  only  what  is  present  and  apparent  to 
the  senses.  Of  charitable  men,  the  great  majority 
would  rather  contribute  for  the  supply  of  the  wants 
of  the  body,  than  to  the  education  of  the  immortal 
spirit,  and  prefer  to  meet  the  existing  and  perpet- 
ually recurring  necessities  of  the  poor  rather  than 
to  seek  ways  and  provide  means  for  removing  the 
causes  of  poverty.  Nations  built  prisons  long  ages 
before    they    established   schools ;     and    to    this    day 


20  C0]S1MEM0KAT1YE     DISCOURSE. 

nations  and  individuals  are  slower  to  endow  col- 
leges, than  tliey  arc  to  found  almshouses  and  hos- 
pitals. It  is  only  a  few  men  of  rare  discern- 
ment— 

Souls  destined  to  o'crleap  tlic  vulgar  lot, 

And  mould  the  world  unto  the  scheme  of  God — 

it  is  only  such,  who  can  pierce  through  the  out- 
ward phenomena  to  the  inward  and  spiritual  causes, 
who  can  look  beyond  immediate  and  temporary 
issues  to  remote  and  permanent  results;  who  are 
willing  to  plant  seeds  for  others  to  gather  the  fruit; 
who,  in  short,  and  in  the  language  of  our  text,  have 
the  wisdom  and  the  power  to  "  raise  up  tlie  founda- 
tions for  many  generations."  It  is,  therefore,  simple 
even-handed  justice  to  bestow  rare  honor  on  men 
of  such  rare  wisdom  and  virtue ;  to  perpetuate  their 
memories  by  making  them  commensurate  with  the 
duration  of  the  institutions  which  they  have  founded ; 
to  mete  out  to  them  a  height  of  renown,  a  breadth 
of  esteem  and  a  depth  of  veneration  corresponding 
with  the  breadth  and  length  and  height  and  depth 
of  tlieir  foundations,  and  the  comprehensiveness  of 
views  and  elevation  of  sentiments  hy  which  they 
were  distinguished :  it  is  right  and  proper  that 
those  who  have  studied  and  labored  and  prayed 
and  denied  themselves,  and  sacrificed  themselves  to 


COMMEMOEATIVE    DISCOURSE.  21 

educate  and  enrich  the  mmds  and  hearts  of  many 
generations,  should  be  enshrined  in  the  grateful 
and  affectionate  remembrance  of  men  from  age  to 
age. 

On  this  princijDle,  few  will  receive  higher  honor 
than  the  founders  of  Christian  colleges  and  semi- 
naries of  learning.  And  among  the  founders  of 
such  institutions,  few  in  this  or  in  other  lands,  in 
ancient  or  in  modern  times,  deserve  a  higher  place 
in  public  estimation,  than  Samuel  Williston. 

The  community  generally,  and  especially  the  nu- 
merous youth  who  have  enjoyed  the  benefits  of 
his  wisdom  and  munificence,  will  desire  to  know 
something  of  the  early  life  and  history  of  a  man 
who  has  been  so  successful  in  business  and  made 
such  an  exemplary  use  of  his  large  acquisitions. 

Samuel  Williston  was  born  in  Easthampton,  June 
17,  1795.  Thus  his  birthday  was  the  twentieth 
anniversary  of  the  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill.  He  was 
the  son  of  Rev.  Payson  Williston,  of  Easthampton, 
who  was  the  son  of  Rev.  Noah  AVilliston,  of  West 
Haven,  Conn.,  who  had  four  children,  two  sons, 
both  of  whom  were  ministers,  and  two  daughters, 
both  of  whom  were  ministers'  wives.  On  his  father's 
side    he    was    own    cousin    to    Rev.    Richard    Salter 


22  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

Storrs,  D.  D.,  of  Braintree,  and  so  akin,  not  only 
to  the  Willistons  and  Storrses,  but  to  the  Paysons, 
the  Strongs,  the  Elys  and  the  other  illustrious  clergy- 
men whose  names  Professor  Park  has  recently  woven 
like  a  garland  about  the  brow  of  the  Braintree 
pastor.  His  mother,  Mrs.  Sarah  Birdseye  Williston, 
was  also  the  daughter  of  a  Connecticut  clergyman, 
Rev.  Nathan  Birdseye,  of  Stratford. 

His  parents  and  grandparents  were  all  remark- 
able for  their  longevity.  His  father  lived  to  the 
age  of  93,  and  his  father  to  the  age  of  77 ;  his 
mother  to  the  age  of  82,  and  her  father  to  his  103d 
year — all  thus  exceeding  the  appointed  limitu  of 
threescore  years  and  ten,  and  all  doubtless  exem- 
plifying the  fifth  commandment,  which  Paul  calls 
the  first  commandment  with  promise :  "  Honor  thy 
father  and  thy  mother,  that  thy  days  may  be  long 
upon  the  land  which  the  Lord  thy  God  giveth  thee." 
Mr.  Williston  himself  had  almost  reached  the  age 
o£  fourscore  years ;  and  yet  with  the  humble  piety 
of  the  patriarch  of  Israel  he  could  and  would  have 
said:  "Few  and  evil  have  the  days  of  the  years  of 
my  life  been,  and  have  not  attained  unto  the  days 
of  the  years  of  the  life  of  my  fathers  in  the  days 
of  their  pilgrimage." 

His  father  will   be  remembered  by  some   of   this 


COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE .  23 

audience,  as  he  is  well  remembered  by  the  speaker, 
as  one  of  the  gentlest,  kindest,  loveliest  men  that 
ever  walked  the  earth,  too  modest  to  know  his 
own  worth,  too  meek  sometimes  to  assert  his  own 
rights,  almost  too  honest,  unsuspecting,  unselfish  and 
unworldly  to  hve  in  such  a  world  as  this ;  not  a 
great  man  but,  as  every  body  would  say,  a  good 
man ;  not  an  eloquent  preacher,  but  his  life  a  per- 
petual and  most  eloquent  sermon  on  the  golden 
rule,  and  his  very  face  beaming  with  cheerfulness 
and  benignity  on  all  around  him.  No  wonder  he 
lived  to  be  almost  a  hundred  years  old.  I  only 
wonder  that  such  a  man  should  die  at  all ;  and 
when  I  returned  from  Europe  and  was  told  that 
the  good  old  man  w^as  gone,  it  seemed  to  me  that 
he  must  have  been  translated.  Father  Williston's 
salary  never  amounted  to  $300.  He  had,  however, 
a  settlement  of  £70,  with  which  he  bought  a  small 
farm  of  thirty-three  acres  of  poor  land,  whereon  he 
used  to  work  in  haying  time  and  a  few  hours  a 
day  at  other  seasons,  to  eke  out  a  scanty  subsist- 
ence for  his  family. 

Mrs.  Williston,  Samuel's  mother,  was  born  to  be 
a  helpmeet  to  such  a  poor  minister.  This  excellent 
couple  possessed,  as  husband  and  wife  always  should 
possess,  the  qualities  and  habits  that  are  mutually 


24  COMMEMOKATIVE    DISCOURSE. 

compensative  the  one  to  the  other,  so  as  together 
to  make  a  perfect  whole.  She  was  as  mdustrious 
and  faithful  in  the  parsonage  as  he  was  in  the  par-" 
ish ;  as  economical  as  he  was  liberal ;  as  careful  and 
anxious  as  he  was  cheerful  and  happy ;  a  very  Martha 
for  household  care  and  thrift,  though  not  without 
Mary's  part  also  in  the  one  thing  needful.  While 
he  united  in  himself  many  of  the  characteristics  of 
both  his  parents,  Samuel  bore  a  striking  resemblance 
in  person,  mind  and  manners  to  his  mother.  Bound 
by  the  customs  of  the  age  to  exercise  hospitality 
as  well  as  to  provide  things  honest  in  the  sight  of 
all  men,  I  have  heard  her  say  that  she  often  had 
some  ministerial  brother,  with  his  whole  family,  stop 
for  dinner,  or  perchance  to  stay  over  night,  when 
there  was  not  enough  in  the  whole  house  to  give 
them  a  single  meal.  Yet  the  dinner  was  always 
forthcoming,  the  table  comfortable  and  the  whole 
house  in  perfect  order.  The  barrel  of  meal  was 
never  quite  empty,  and  the  cruse  of  oil  never  failed. 
Thus  patient  industry  and  strict  economy  were  beau- 
tifully wedded  to  generous  hospitality  and  Christian 
liberality  in  the  household  of  the  first  pastor  of 
Easthampton,  as  they  always  joined  hand  in  hand 
and  walked  side  by  side  in  the  life  of  his  distin- 
guished sou. 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE.  25 

A  family  of  six  children  were  born  in  that  par- 
sonage, and  all  but  one  (who  died  in  childhood) 
*  were  brought  up  and  educated  on  that  salary,  with 
the  help  which  they  were  taught  to  render  to  them- 
selves and  their  parents — brought  up  to  habits  of 
industry  and  economy,  and  educated  in  the  prin- 
ciples of  virtue  and  piety ;  and  now  there  is 
wealth  enough  in  the  family  to  cover  every  inch 
of  that  poor  farm  over  with  dollars.  Of  his  two 
brothers,  one  was  Dea.  J.  P.  Williston  of  North- 
ampton, the  reformer  and  philanthropist,  whose  hu- 
mane and  Christian  charities,  beginning  at  home, 
compassed  the  globe,  dropping  like  the  rain  and 
distilling  like  the  dew  on  the  dry  and  thirsty  land. 
The  other,  Dea.  N.  B.  Williston,  president  of  a  bank 
in  Brattleboro,  Yt.,  a  man  of  like  sj^irit  with  his 
brothers,  is  the  only  surviving  member  of  the  famil}^ 
Of  his  two  sisters,  one  was  the  wife  of  J.  D.  Whit- 
ney, Esq.,  of  Northampton,  and  the  mother  of  the 
distinguished  professors  of  that  name ;  the  other  was 
the  mother  of  the  late  Mrs.  Dr.  Adams  of  Boston. 

Samuel,  though  the  third  child  that  was  born  to 
his  parents,  was  the  oldest  son  that  grew  up  to  man- 
hood. The  trials  and  triumphs  of  his  education  and 
his  early  business,  and  the  story  of  his  marriage, 
constitute   a   romance    in   real  life    of   rare    interest 


26  COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE. 

and  pathos.  He  began  to  go  to  school  very  young, 
and  attended  the  district  school  in  his  native  place, 
summer  and  winter,  till  he  was  ten  years  old ;  then 
in  the  winter  only  till  he  Avas  sixteen,  at  which  age 
his  schooling,  as  it  was  called,  that  is,  his  instruc- 
tion in  the  common  school,  which  then  scarcely  ex- 
tended beyond  reading,  writing  and  the  rudiments 
of  arithmetic,  ceased  altogether.  He  began  to  work 
on  a  farm  at  the  early  age  of  ten,  in  the  absence 
of  his  father  on  a  missionary  tour  of  three  months 
in  the  State  of  New  York.  This  first  work  was 
done  on  the  farm,  and  under  the  direction  of  a 
good  deacon  in  his  father's  church,  Dea.  Solomon 
Lyman,  whose  memory  he  always  held  in  high 
esteem  and  veneration.  After  this  he  worked  on  a 
farm  every  summer  till  he  was  sixteen,  sometimes 
on  his  father's,  sometimes  for  some  of  his  parish- 
ioners, and  the  last  of  these  summers  out  of  town 
in  AYesthampton,  where  his  wages  were  $7  a  month. 
These  facts  in  his  earl}^  life  are  not  only  of  interest 
by  way  of  contrast  with  his  subsequent  prosperity, 
but  he  was  wont  to  attach  great  importance  to  these 
early  lal)ors  as  training  him  to  habits  of  industry, 
and  still  more  as  laying  the  foundations  of  that 
bodily  health  and  strength  without  which  he  was 
persuaded  he  never  could  have  accomplished  his 
life-work. 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOUESE.  I  i 

After  he  ceased  going  to  school,  he  studied  to 
some  extent  privately  with  his  father,  though 
only  in  the  winter,  for  he  was  obliged  to  work 
in  the  summer.  He  loved  study  and  longed  for 
a  liberal  education.  But  he  saw  no  way,  in  which 
he  could  obtain  the  requisite  means.  He  there- 
fore went  into  a  clothier's  shop  belonging  to  a 
brother-in-law  in  Rochester,  Vt.,  where  he  la- 
bored the  greater  part  of  two  winters,  till  he 
became  master  of  the  art  to  such  an  extent 
that  he  was  entrusted  with  the  charge  of  the 
shop.  Meanwhile  he  lost  no  time,  spent  his  even- 
ings in  reading,  and  made  the  most  of  all  the 
means  of  self-education  within  his  reach.  His  de- 
sire for  a  better  education  being  thus  increased, 
on  his  return  from  Vermont,  late  in  the  winter 
of  1813-14,  he  entered  Westfield  Academy.  But 
his  funds  were  exhausted  before  he  had  com- 
pleted a  single  term,  and  he  came  home  again 
to  study  with  his  father.  Still  encouraged  by 
his  teachers  and  his  parents,  that  where  there  was 
a  will  there  was  a  way,  and  that  some  way  would  be 
found  for  him  yet  to  go  through  college,  he  now 
began  to  study  Latin,  which  he  pursued  first  with 
his  father  and  then  with  Kev.  Mr.  Gould,  of 
Southampton.      In   the   summer    of    1814,    learning 


28  COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE. 

that  there  were  funds  at  Anclover  for  the  aid  of 
indigent  students,  and  attracted  by  the  excellence 
of  the  institution,  he  went  to  Phillips  Academy, 
then  under  the  principal  charge  of  Kev.  John 
Adams,  and  enjoying  the  instructions  also  of  Mr. 
Hawes,  afterwards  Dr.  Hawes,  of  the  Centre  Church 
in  Hartford,  Conn.  It  took  more  time  and  more 
money  then  to  go  to  Andover  than  it  does  now. 
Young  Williston  could  not  afford  to  go  by  stage, 
then  the  only  public  conveyance.  His  father 
therefore  carried  him  one  day's  ride  to  Brookfield, 
where,  according  to  the  hospitable  and  ministe- 
rial usages  of  the  times,  they  lodged  at  the  house 
of  the  pastor.  The  next  day  he  walked  to 
Worcester.  Fatigue  then  compelled  him  to  ride 
to  Boston.  From  Boston  he  set  out  on  foot  again 
for  Andover,  but  caught  a  ride  a  part  of  the  way 
on  a  farmer's  wagon.  He  had  no  trunlv,  no  valise 
or  carpet-bag ;  all  he  had  with  him,  pretty  much 
everything  he  had  in  the  world,  was  tied  up  in  a 
bundle.  At  Andover,  for  the  sake  of  economy, 
though  not  disliking  the  long  walk  for  its  own 
sake  and  for  exercise,  he  boarded  a  mile  and  a  half 
from  the  Academy.  Yet  he  w\as  never  tardy.  He 
never  failed  in  a  recitation.  He  went  there  to  do 
his  best.     He  always  did  do  the  best  that  he  could. 


COMMEMOEATIVE     DISCOURSE.  29 

He  obeyed  all  the  rules  of  the  school.  He  ex- 
celled in  his  studies.  He  went  up  at  a  step  from 
the  Epitome  of  Sacred  History  over  the  class  in 
Viri  Komae  to  the  class  in  Selectae  a  Sacris  et 
Profanis,  and  on  examination  at  the  close  of  his 
first  term,  he  was  placed  upon  the  foundation  as 
a  charity  scholar.  Now  he  had  reached  a  point 
from  which  he  thought  he  could  see  the  goal  of 
his  ambition,  a  college  education.  Now  he  was 
satisfied  and  regarded  his  fortune  as  made,  or  at 
least  quite  secure.  But  severer  trials  awaited  him. 
He  had  not  been  there  a  year  when  his  eye-sight 
failed  him,  and  he  was  obliged  to  leave.  For  two 
years,  now,  from  the  spring  of  1815  to  that  of 
1817,  he  vibrated  between  labor  on  the  farm  and 
a  clerkship  in  a  store,  passing  the  larger  part  of 
the  time  in  the  store,  but  with  intervals  of  two 
or  three  months  on  the  farm,  suffering  all  the 
while  from  weakness,  inflammation  and  incessant 
pain  in  the  eyes,  till  at  length  he  gave  up  all 
hope  of  being  or  doing  anything  that  could  sat- 
isfy his  ambition.  He  made  up  his  mind — this 
is  the  way  in  which  he  was  in  the  habit  of  speaking 
of  it — that  he  must  be  a  farmer,  and  a  poor  man 
at  that.  These  years,  however,  were  by  no  means 
lost   to   him.     In  the   store  of  Justin  Ely  of  West 


30  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

Springfield,  and  still  more  in  the  large  wholesale 
establishment  of  Francis  Child  of  New  York  city, 
with  whom  he  spent  a  year,  he  was  acquiring  that 
knowledge  of  men  and  things,  and  forming  those 
ideas  and  habits  of  business  which  were  after- 
wards to  be  of  such  essential  service  to  him  in 
the  management  of  his  own  affairs.  Moreover  it 
was  during  this  period,  under  the  discipline  of  re- 
peated disappointments  and  sore  trials,  accompa- 
nied by  the  effectual  teaching  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
that  he  began  life  anew  as  a  Christian,  and  after 
a  severe  inward  struggle,  w^hich  began  soon  after 
leaving  Andover  and  ended  in  submission  and  peace 
just  before  going  to  New  York,  he  consecrated 
himself  publicly  to  the  service  of  God  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Presbyterian  church  under  the  pastoral 
care  of   Kev.  Dr.  Spring. 

In  the  spring  of  1817,  at  the  age  of  22,  baffled 
in  all  his  plans  by  the  failure  of  his  eyes,  and 
almost  disheartened  by  the  double  disappointment 
consequent  upon  it,  first  in  regard  to  a  college 
education,  and  then  in  his  experiments  in  the  mer- 
cantile line,  he  came  back  to  his  father  and  pro- 
posed to  him  to  go  into  the  farming  business;  the 
father  to  furnish  the  farm  and  the  capital,  and  the 
son    to   manage  it  and    do    the  work.      The   father 


COMMEMORATIYE     DISCOURSE.  31 

reluctantly  consented,  invested  some  four  or  five 
hundred  dollars  from  his  father's  estate,  in  the 
purchase  of  land,  taking  the  deed  of  it  in  his  own 
name,  and  then  borrowed  money  for  the  purchase 
of  more  land  and  implements  of  husbandry.  Thus 
unpromising  was  the  commencement  of  Mr.  Willis- 
ton's  business  life,  without  capital,  almost  without 
anything  that  he  could  call  his  own,  and  having 
run  his  father  in  debt  for  the  very  tools  with 
which  he  was  to  do  his  work.  He  continued  to 
follow  farming  as  his  business  four  years,  enlarging 
the  farm  and  extending  the  business,  varying  it 
also  by  raising  sheep  and  growing  fine  wool,  till  he 
'  became,  for  that  place  and  those  times,  quite  a 
large  farmer  and  wool-grower.  He  worked  on  the 
farm  himself,  however,  only  in  the  summer.  In 
the  winter,  he  betook  himself  to  that  unfailing  re- 
source of  intelligent  and  aspiring  youth  of  both 
sexes  in  Yankee  land,  teaching  school.  The  first 
winter,  he  taught  in  the  North  district  in  East- 
hampton,  for  $16  a  month,  boarding  himself  and 
walking  more  than  a  mile  to  and  from  school,  and 
doing  all  the  chores  at  home,  morning  and  evening. 
The  next  year,  he  taught  the  large  scholars  in  the 
Center  district  at  Southampton,  taking,  in  the 
spring,  the    place    which   had  been    filled   by    a  col- 


32  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

leffe  student  in  the  winter.  The  followino'  winter, 
he  taught  five  months  in  NorthaniiDton.  He  next 
taught,  in  the  years  1820-21,  for  fourteen  months 
consecutively,  the  grammar  school  in  Springfield, 
at  the  same  time  managing  the  farm  and  carrying 
on  the  work  with  hired  help,  and  the  aid  of  his 
younger  brothers.  During  the  winter  of  1821-22, 
he  taught  a  select  school  in  Easthampton. 

In  the  spring  of  1822,  (May  27,)  he  was  married 
to  Miss  Emily  Graves,  daughter  of  Elnathan  Graves, 
a  respectable  farmer,  in  moderate  circumstances,  in 
the  neighljoring  town  of  Williamsburg.  They  had 
been  engaged  three  years  previous,  the  marriage 
being  delayed  from  economical  and  prudential  con- 
siderations. Partly  to  illustrate  the  simplicity  of 
the  times,  and  jiartly  to  show  his  own  limited 
means,  1  have  heard  him  say  that  he  was  married 
in  a  coat  wdiich  he  had  worn  two  years  for  Sun- 
days and  holidays,  and  that  they  took  no  bridal 
tour  or  excursion  after  the  marriage.  Or,  to  tell 
the  story  more  exactly,  their  only  bridal  excursion 
was  to  Rum  Brook,  at  the  foot  of  Mount  Tom,  in 
Easthampton,  where  they  had  a  bottle  of  wine  and 
some  plain  cake  for  their  entertainment.  Ahnost 
half  a  century  afterwards,  happening  to  call  upon 
them  on  the  forty-eighth  anniversary  of  their  mar- 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE.  33 

riage,  I  found  them  preparing  to  celebrate  it  at 
the  same  place  in  the  same  beautiful  and  simple 
way.  Are  the  brides  and  grooms  of  our  day,  who 
think  they  must  cross  the  ocean,  or  mayhap  go 
round  the  world  for  their  bridal  tour — are  they 
wiser  or  happier  than  this  worthy  couple  ?  He 
brought  his  wife  home  to  the  house  of  his  father, 
and  the  two  families  lived  together  under  the  same 
roof  in  beautiful  harmony  and  mutual  love  for 
twenty-one  years,  only  enlarging  the  old  parson- 
age and  beautifying  the  grounds  to  correspond  with 
the  growth  of  business  and  their  increasing  pros- 
perity. 

He  still  taught  one  year,  after  being  married,  in 
the  Central  district  school  in  Easthampton,  thus  mak- 
ing five  winters  in  all,  besides  the  entire  year  of  his 
teaching  in  Springfield.  Meanwhile  the  farming 
business  w^ent  on,  enlarging,  as  we  have  said,  and 
on  the  whole  prospering.  But  he  was  obliged  to 
run  in  debt  at  the  outset.  This  debt  was  still 
further  increased  for  the  sake  of  enlarging  the 
business.  He  had  invested  in  land  and  sheep, 
$1,800,  most  of  which  was  borrowed  capital.  His 
first  crop  of  wool  was  lost  through  the  failure  of 
the  purchaser.  Two  or  three  hundred  dollars  a 
year  was  all  that  could  be  saved  for  repairing  this 

5 


34  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

loss  and  reducing  this  burden  of  indebtedness. 
Mrs.  Williston  has  remarked,  that  at  this  time  it 
was  a  daily  subject  of  prayer  at  the  domestic  altar 
that  God  would  open  to  him  ways  and  means  by 
which  he  might  obtain  a  competence  for  himself 
and  family.  And  now,  at  length — doubtless  in  an- 
swer to  those  very  prayers,  and  as  the  result  too 
of  the  severe  discipline  to  which  he  had  been  sub- 
jected— the  way  was  to  be  opened.  And  the  re- 
lief was  to  come  through  the  wife  whom  God  had 
given  him  to  be  not  only  his  companion  and  help- 
meet in  general,  but  his  wise  counselor  and  his 
good  genius  in  that  very  thing  which  he  had  so 
often  made  a  subject  of  special  prayer.  Mrs.  Wil- 
liston had  never  felt  able  to  keep  the  help  she 
needed  in  housekeeping,  nor  to  give  what  she 
wished  in  aid  of  charitable  objects.  While  looking 
about  for  relief  and  enlargement  in  these  particu- 
lars, she  found  that  her  mother  had  been  in  the 
habit  of  making  covered  buttons  for  her  own  fam- 
ily, and  a  smalt  surplus  for  sale  to  others.  She 
took  up  the  business  at  once  on  a  somewhat  larger 
scale.  The  first  package  of  buttons  which  she 
made,  she  took  to  Mr.  David  Whitney,  of  North- 
ampton, (long  the  Treasurer  of  the  Hampshire 
County  Missionary  Society,)    as    a    contribution    of 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOUESE.  35 

the  first-fruits  to  tlie  cause  of  missions;  and  Pres- 
ident Humphrey,  happening  in  about  that  time, 
became  the  first  purchaser.  Little  did  he  or  she 
think,  that  there  was  the  germ  of  Williston  Sem- 
inary and  Wilhston  College. 

A  button  machine  ought  to  be  graven  on  the 
seal  of  one,  if  not  both  of  these  institutions  ;  and 
the  founders  should  be  represented  by  a  double 
bust  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Williston,  not  set  back  to 
back  like  some  of  the  old  Greek  sculptures,  but  put- 
ting their  heads  and  hands  together  in  the  manufac- 
ture of  covered  buttons.  Then  if  Christian  art  could 
in  some  way  represent  the  work  of  missions  and 
the  kingdom  and  glory  of  God  in  full  view  before 
their  eyes,  illumining  their  pathway,  irradiating 
their  persons,  and  making  their  upturned  faces 
shine  with  the  light  of  heaven,  the  picture  would 
be  quite  complete. 

But  to  return  to  our  narrative.  The  second  pack- 
age was  sent  to  Arthur  Tappan,  of  New  York,  who 
immediately  contracted  for  twenty-five  gross  at  two 
dollars  a  gross.  Fifty  dollars !  Never  in  all  their 
subsequent  wealth  did  they  feel  so  rich  as  when  they 
received  that  order  from  the  firm  of  Arthur  Tappan. 
The  first  buttons  Mrs.  Williston  made  with  her  own 
hands.     Then  she  employed  other  hands  to  work  for 


3G  COMWEMORATIYE     DISCOURSE. 

her  in  the  house.  Next  she  began  to  give  out  but- 
tons to  be  made  in  neighboring  families.  Mr.  Wilhs- 
ton  soon  perceived  that  here  was  a  field  of  enterprise 
wider  and  more  promising  than  farming,  and  that 
instead  of  making  her  time  and  toil  merely  subsid- 
iary to  his  work,  he  might  better  make  his  minis- 
ter to  hers.  It  was  in  1826,  when  he  was  already 
more  than  thirty  years  of  age,  that  the  beginning 
was  made  of  this  new  undertaking.  In  1827,  he 
went  to  New  York,  found  customers,  received 
orders,  and  went  back  to  extend  his  business. 
Soon  he  went  in  like  manner  to  Philadelphia,  Balti- 
more and  Boston,  and  established  agencies  in  all  the 
principal  cities  of  the  United  States.  The  business 
grew  rapidly,  and  it  was  only  a  short  time,  before  he 
had  more  than  a  thousand  families  at  work  making 
buttons  for  him,  through  all  that  circle  of  towns, 
thirty  or  forty  miles  in  diameter,  of  which  East- 
hampton  Avas  the  center.  Auxiliary  to  the  button 
business,  he  opened  a  store,  and,  for  a  number  of 
years,  carried  on  quite  a  large  business  for  the 
country,  in  the  sale  of  dry  goods,  his  first  clerk 
being  Mr.  Knight,  and  Mrs.  Williston  his  first  book- 
keeper. 

The  manufacture  went  on   in  this  way  by  hand, 
employing    thousands    of    busy   and    skillful    fingers 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE.  37 

in  a  constantly  extending  circle  of  private  families, 
and  rewarding  their  industry  with  a  corresponding 
increase  of  the  comforts  and  elegancies  of  life, 
for  ten  or  a  dozen  years,  when  Providence  opened 
the  way  for  a  still  greater  improvement  and  en- 
largement. In  one  of  his  visits  to  New  York, 
Mr.  Williston  found  there  some  buttons  of  Eno;lish 
manufacture,  made  without  thread,  without  needle, 
I  had  almost  said  without  fingers,  in  short,  mani- 
festly made  by  machinery.  He  took  these  buttons 
to  the  Messrs.  Joel  and  Josiah  Hayden,  who  were 
then  just  beginning  to  be  known  as  ingenious  and 
enterprising  mechanics  in  Williamsburg,  and  pro- 
posed to  furnish  the  capital,  sell  the  goods  and 
divide  the  profits  equally,  if  they  would  discover 
the  process,  get  up  the  machinery  and  manufac- 
ture the  buttons.  They  entered  with  characteris- 
tic zeal  and  energy  upon  the  experiment,  and 
worked  on  patiently  with  hands  and  brains  for 
years  before  their  labors  were  crowned  with 
complete  success.  It  was  a  full  year  before  they 
could  make  a  button.  When  they  had  succeeded 
to  some  extent,  they  derived  great  assistance  from 
a  colored  man  who  had  been  an  employee  in  an 
English  factory  and  knew  the  machinery  and  the 
process.     Whether  the  memory  of  this  timely  ser- 


38  COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE. 

vice  was,  in  any  measure,  the  cause  of  their  life-long 
friendship  for  the  colored  race,  or  whether  Provi- 
dence sent  this  man  to  serve  them  in  return  for 
what  it  was  already  in  their  hearts  to  do  for  the 
cause  of  humanity  and  to  furnish  them  the  means 
for  more  enlarged  philanthropy  in  coming  years, 
I  do  not  know.  But  I  can  not  but  see  in  this 
incident,  as  well  as  in  the  connection  of  Arthur 
Tappan  and  President  Humphrey  with  this  enter- 
prise, not  only  interesting  coincidences,  but  illus- 
trations of  that  almost  poetical  justice  and  fitness 
which  the  Greeks  w^ere  so  fond  of  noting,  and 
which  no  close  observer  can  fail  to  mark,  some- 
times at   least,  in  the  providence  of  God. 

The  perfecting  of  this  machinery  and  the  suc- 
cessful carrying  on  of  the  manufacture  made  the 
fortunes  of  both  parties.  It  was  the  making — 
it  was,  at  least,  the  beginning  of  Ilaydenville.  It 
has  since  done  the  same  service  to  Easthampton. 
Mr.  Williston  used  often  to  speak  of  the  perfect 
harmony  and  happiness  of  his  business  relations 
with  Mr.  Hayden — a  harmony  which  was  ex- 
pressed and  increased  by  their  traveling  in  Europe 
together,  and  at  length  still  farther  cemented  by 
a  marriage  connection  between  the  families.  This 
harmonious  co-operation  continued  without  interrup- 


COMMEMOKATIVE    DISCOURSE.  39 

tion,  twelve  years,  till  in  1847,  by  mutual  consent, 
the  partnership  was  dissolved,  and,  at  once  for  the 
personal  convenience  of  Mr.  Williston  and  for  the 
benefit  of  his  native  place,  the  button  business  was 
transferred  to  Easthampton. 

We  have  dwelt  on  these  earlier  years  of  Mr. 
Williston's  business  life  with  a  particularity  which 
may  perhaps  require  some  apology.  He  was  a 
business  man,  and  it  is  as  an  able  and  success- 
ful business  man  that  we  wish  to  know  his  his- 
tory. These  earlier  years  of  his  life  are  unknown 
to  the  younger  portion  of  the  community,  and 
have  more  or  less  faded  from  the  memory  of  the 
older  inhabitants.  While  they  developed  his  char- 
acter and  formed  his  habits,  they  illustrate  also 
the  providence  of  God.  While  they  set  before  us 
a  remarkable  example  of  patience  and  perseverance, 
of  faith  and  hope  in  God,  finally  triumphing  and 
rejoicing  in  the  manifest  blessing  of  heaven,  they 
forcibly  teach  this  great  lesson,  that  we  should 
never  despise  small  things — that  nothing  is  in  re- 
ality small,  since  things  apparently  the  smallest  may 
lead  to  the  greatest  results. 

It  w^as  when  he  was  a  little  over  forty  that 
Mr.  Wilhston  began  to  lay  "foundations"  and  build 
not   only  for  himself  but  for  his  native  town   and 


40  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

for  the  larger  public.  In  1837  he  bore  a  promi- 
nent part  in  the  erection  of  the  house  of  worship 
no\v  occupied  by  the  first  church  in  Easthampton. 
In  1841  he  established  Williston  Seminary.  In 
1843  he  built  his  own  house.  Early  in  1845  he 
founded  the  Williston  Professorship  of  Rhetoric 
and  Oratory  in  Amherst  College.  Later  in  the 
same  year,  he  spent  six  months  in  traveling  in 
Europe.  In  the  winter  of  1846-7  he  founded  the 
Graves  Professorship,  now  the  WiUiston  Professor- 
ship of  Greek,  and  one-half  of  the  Hitchcock  Pro- 
fessorship of  Natural  Theology  and  Geology  in 
Amherst  College,  thus  making  in  all  the  sum  of 
$50,000,  which  he  had  already  given  for  perma- 
nent foundations  in  that  institution. 

It  was  in  1847  that  he  removed  his  business 
from  Haydenville  to  Easthampton.  From  that  time 
to  the  present,  we  need  not  dwell  on  the  details 
of  his  private  life,  for  they  are  fresh  in  the  memory 
of  us  all.  I  need  not  remind  you  how  he  went 
on  adding  factory  to  factory  and  one  species  of 
business  to  another,  house  to  house,  block  to  block, 
and  even  village  to  village,  till  from  one  of  the 
smallest,  Easthampton  has  become  one  of  the  larg- 
est and  most  populous  towns  in  Hampshire  county. 
I  need    not    tell   you    how    he    has   built   churches, 


COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE,  41 

and  enlarged  the  grounds  and  multiplied  the  edi- 
fices of  Williston  Seminary,  and  increased  the  funds 
and  the  faculty  of  the  Seminary  and  of  Amherst 
College,  and  extended  and  diffused  his  donations  for 
public,  charitable,  educational  and  religious  objects, 
corresponding  with  the  increase  of  his  wealth  and 
the  demands  of  the  times,  till  his  name  has  become 
identified  with  all  the  great  benevolent  enterprises 
of  the  age,  and  his  influence  is  felt  all  over  the 
world. 

Mr.  Williston  has  filled  not  a  few  posts  of  honor 
and  trust.  He  was  a  member  of  the  Lower  House 
of  the  Massachusetts  Legislature  in  1841,  and  a 
member  of  the  Senate  in  1842  and  1843.  He  was 
elected  to  the  Legislature  as  an  Anti-Slavery  Whig, 
and  might  doubtless  have  continued  to  occupy  and 
adorn  public  life,  if  he  had  not,  after  three  years' 
legislative  service,  declined  a  re-election.  In  poli- 
tics, he  has  always  been  known  as  belonging  to  the 
school  of  progress  and  reform.  He  was  usually  in 
advance  of  his  party  and  of  the  age,  a  full  believer 
in  the  doctrine  of  the  higlier  law,  and  the  applica- 
tion of  Christian  ethics  to  the  legislative,  executive 
and  judiciary  departments  of  the  government,  and 
therefore  sometimes  charged  with  political  heresy 
and  fanaticism,  though  he  was   never    an    impracti- 

6 


42  COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE. 

cable  or  an  oxtreiiiist.  In  the  great  struggle  for 
the  mtegrity  and  existence  of  the  nation,  he  was 
ever  among  the  firmest  supporters  of  the  govern- 
ment, and  among  the  most  strenuous  advocates  for 
the  extinction  of  slavery  as  the  chief  cause  of  all 
our  troubles.  While  a  member  of  the  Legislature, 
in  1841,  he  was  chosen  by  that  body  a  trustee  of 
Amherst  College.  For  thirty- three  years,  the  aver- 
age duration  of  human  life,  and  throughout  one 
entire  generation,  he  has  not  only  been  a  member 
of  the  Corporation,  but  during  the  larger  part  of 
these  years  a  member  also  of  the  Prudential  Com- 
mittee and  often  of  special  committees  on  build- 
ings and  business  matters  of  the  utmost  import- 
ance, and  until  the  recent  failure  of  his  health  he 
was  from  principle  an  unfailing  attendant  of  ordi- 
nary and  extraordinary  meetings  of  the  board,  and 
unsparing  not  only  of  his  mone}^,  of  which  he  gave 
during  his  life  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars 
from  time  to  time  as  it  was  wanted,  and  would  do 
the  most  good,  but  also  of  his  time,  which,  for  a 
man  of  business  and  wealth,  it  is  often  far  more  diffi- 
cult to  give  than  money.  For  the  same  number  of 
years  he  has  been  not  only  trustee,  but  president 
of  the  trustees  of  Williston  Seminary,  and  with 
only  two  exceptions,  the  one  occasioned  by  sickness 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOUESE.  43 

and  the  other  by  absence  from  the  country,  he  has 
presided  in  all  the  meetings.  He  has  been  the  act- 
ing treasurer  also  of  the  Seminary,  and  has  watched 
over  all  its  external  and  internal  affairs  with  the 
same  wise  and  careful  personal  supervision  which 
he  has  given  to  his  business.  Appointed  by  the 
Governor  and  Council  one  of  the  first  trustees  of 
the  State  Reform  School,  when  that  office  was  no 
sinecure,  he  was  of  great  service  in  erecting  build- 
ings, improving  the  farm  and  inaugurating  the  insti- 
tution. He  was  one  of  the  first  trustees  of  Mount 
Holyoke  Seminary,  of  which  he  helj)ed  to  lay  the 
foundations,  and  in  which  he  ever  felt  a  lively 
interest.  He  was  a  corporate  member  of  the  Ameri- 
can Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions, 
and  for  many  years  as  constant  in  attendance  on 
its  meetings  as  he  was  in  contributions  to  its  funds. 

The  business  corporations,  manufacturing  com- 
panies, banks,  railways,  gas  and  water  power  com- 
panies in  Easthampton,  Northampton,  Holyoke  and 
elsewhere,  in  which  he  was  a  leading  corporator, 
and  usually  president,  are  too  numerous  to  men- 
tion. 

Mr.  Williston's  domestic  life  was  marked  by  great 
trials  as  well  as  great  blessings,  and  had  a  most 
important  bearing  on  his  character  and  history.     For 


44  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

four  years  after  their  marriage,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Wil- 
liston  lived  vitliout  children.  In  1831,  they  lost 
two  children,  then  three  and  a  half  and  one  and  a 
half  years  old,  by  scarlet  fever.  In  1837,  they  were 
called  to  experience  the  same  deep  affliction  again 
in  the  loss,  and  by  the  same  disease,  of  two  children 
who  had  reached  the  age  respectively  of  five  and  a 
half  and  three  and  a  half.  They  were  thus  written 
childless  twice  in  the  space  of  six  years,  and  have 
never  since  had  children  of  their  own.  But  they 
have  adopted  the  children  of  missionaries  and  chil- 
dren who  had  been  bereaved  of  their  parents,  whom 
they  have  reared  and  educated  as  their  own ;  and 
few  families,  probably,  have  enjoyed  more  domestic 
happiness  than  theirs.  And  what  is  more,  schools 
and  churches  and  charitable  societies  without  num- 
ber have  become  their  adopted  children,  have  been 
nursed  and  cherished  by  them  with  a  father's  and 
a  mother's  love  and  made  heirs  to  their  inheritance. 
It  was  during  the  sickness  of  his  last  child  that  Mr. 
AVilliston,  feeling  that  he  had  not  done  his  whole 
duty  as  a  steward  of  the  Lord's  property,  conse- 
crated himself  anew  to  his  service,  set  apart  the 
principal  and  interest  of  a  considerable  investment 
for  benevolent  purposes,  and  thus  entered  on  a 
new  epoch  in  his  Christian  life. 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE.  45 

The  son  and  grandson  of  parents  and  grandpa- 
rents, who  were  not  only  Christians  but  ministers 
of  the  gospel,  Mr.  Williston  early  received  the 
most  careful  Christian  culture  and  training.  He 
read  the  Bible  through  a  great  many  times  in  his 
childhood  and  youth — he  usually  read  it  through 
every  year.  He  was  taught  the  Assembly's  Cate- 
chism, and  not  only  said  it  from  memory  to  his  par- 
ents at  home,  but  according  to  the  usage  of  the  times, 
recited  it  in  school  every  Saturday  forenoon,  and 
repeated  it  from  beginning  to  end,  over  and  over 
again  in  the  church.  He  observed  the  Sabbath 
with  great  strictness,  and  carefully  avoided  pro- 
fanity and  immorality  of  every  kind.  He  not  only 
prayed  in  secret  but  led  the-  family  devotions  at 
his  boarding-place  in  Andover,  before  he  cherished 
any  hope  of  his  personal  interest  in  the  salvation 
by  Christ.  We  might  have  expected  such  a  young 
man,  so  moral,  upright  and  amiable,  to  enter  upon 
a  religious  life,  without  any  great  conflict  or  deep 
conviction  of  sin.  But  this  was  far  from  beino- 
the  case.  He  was  often  much  exercised  about  per- 
sonal religion,  l)ut  on  his  return  from  Andover, 
disappointed  in  his  hopes  of  education,  and  thwarted 
in  his  plans  for  life,  he  passed  through  a  severe 
mental  struggle,  came  under  deep  conviction  of  sin, 


46  COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE. 

felt  liimself  to  be  justly  condemned  by  the  law  of 
God,  and,  in  liimself,  utterly  ruined  and  undone ; 
and  lie  continued  in  this  state  for  months.  It  was 
almost  a  year  before  he  became  clear  in  his  belief 
that  he  Avas  a  real  Christian.  There  was  no  par- 
ticular time  to  w^hich  he  could  point  as  the  begin- 
ning of  his  religious  life.  Light  and  peace  gradually 
dawned  upon  his  soul.  Sudden  and  rapturous  joy 
was  no  part  of  his  Christian  experience.  This 
great  event — for  so  he  regarded  it,  though  there  was 
nothing  very  marked  about  the  time  or  the  manner 
of  it — took  place  in  1816.  Going  to  New  York  soon 
after,  he  heard  with  great  satisfaction,  the  preaching 
of  Dr.  Romeyn,  Dr.  Mason  and  Dr.  Spring,  and  in 
the  winter  of  1816-17,  he  became  a  member  of  Dr. 
Spring's  church.  When  he  left  the  city,  he  trans- 
ferred his  relation  to  the  church  under  his  father's 
care  in  Easthampton,  and  in  1852  he  went  off  with 
others  to  form  the  Payson  Church.  He  was  for  many 
vears  a  member  of  the  committee,  and  a  deacon  in 
the  First  Church,  and  in  the  Payson  Church  he  held 
both  those  offices  from  the  beginning.  He  never 
felt  that  he  could  serve  God  by  proxy,  however 
numerous  might  be  the  agents  whom  he  supported 
in  the  Christian  work  ;  and  munificent  as  his  con- 
tributions were  to  the  maintenance  and  propagation 


COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOUESE.  47 

of  the  gospel,  he  never  thought  or  desired  by  this 
to  purchase  any  exemption  from  personal  service. 
At  home  and  abroad,  till  the  age  of  threescore 
years  and  more,  he  rarely  failed  to  attend  three 
services  on  the  Sabbath,  and  the  remainder  of  the 
day  he  scrupulously  spent  in  religious  reading, 
meditation  and  prayer.  At  home  or  abroad,  he 
never  traveled  or  visited,  wrote  letters  or  trans- 
acted any  business  on  the  Lord's  day;  never  spent 
the  day,  or  any  portion  of  it,  in  walking,  talking, 
riding,  in  any  mere  recreation  or  amusement. 
When  he  was  all  ready  to  commence  his  voyage 
to  Europe,  the  vessel  on  which  he  had  engaged 
his  passage,  and  expected  to  sail  about  the  middle 
of  the  week,  was  detained  two  or  three  days  by 
a  violent  storm.  Sabbath  morning  the  weather 
was  fair,  and  the  captain,  crew  and  passengers 
were  all  eager  and  impatient  to  spread  sails.  But 
Mr.  Williston  refused  to  embark  on  the  Lord's 
day,  although,  according  to  usage,  he  thereby  for- 
feited his  passage  money  as  well  as  delayed  his 
passage.  The  captain,  however,  at  length  yielded 
to  his  convictions  and  convenience ;  they  sailed 
Monday  morning,  and  reached  Liverpool  in  ad- 
vance of  all  the  vessels  that  sailed  from  New  York 
on   the   previous  Sunday.       On  the    same  principle. 


48  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

lie  chose  to  be  left  at  a  comfortless  way  station 
midway  over  the  Alps  at  midnight  Saturday  night, 
rather  than  to  contmue  his  journey  on  the  Sabbath. 
He  reverenced  the  Sabbath  and  the  sanctuary.  He 
was  planted  in  the  house  of  the  Lord,  and  he  flour- 
ished in  the  courts    of    our   God. 

If  we  turn  now  from  this  outline  of  his  private, 
public  and  religious  life  to  a  consideration  of  some 
of  the  chief  elements  of  his  character  and  useful- 
ness, the  first  question  which  will  spontaneousl}^ 
arise  in  most  minds  will  be,  what  was  the  secret 
of  his  success  in  business. 

The  secret  of  what  he  did  lay  in  what  he  was, 
as  is  always  true,  especially  of  men  who  do  much, 
and  the  foundation  of  what  he  was,  was  laid,  of 
course,  in  the  nature  which  God  gave  him.  He 
inherited  from  his  parents  a  good  physical  and 
mental  constitution.  He  had  a  healthy  Ijody,  an 
attractive  person,  and  a  well-balanced  mind.  In  child- 
hood and  youth  his  mind  and  manners  were  culti- 
vated in  good  schools,  but  still  more  in  the  best 
society;  for  there  is  no  better  society  than  that 
which  gathers  about  the  fireside  of  a  New  Eng- 
land pastor  and  forms  the  circle  in  which  he 
moves.  He  always  mourned  his  loss  of  a  classical 
education,  and  was    disposed    to    depreciate    himself 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE.  49 

unduly  in  comparison  with  educated  men.  This 
felt  want  of  the  education  of  the  schools  was  in- 
tensely aggravated  in  his  own  view  by  the  early 
failure  and  perpetual  weakness  of  his  eye-sight. 
Never  after  he  was  of  age  was  he  able  to  read 
through  a  book  or  an  article.  Never  during  all 
his  business  and  public  life  could  he  read  his  o's\ti 
correspondence,  a  newspaper,  or  even  a  chapter  of 
the  Bible.  But  he  triumphed  over  all  these  ad- 
verse circumstances,  and  wrested  wisdom,  in  spite 
of  fate,  from  the  very  clutches  of  necessity.  Mrs. 
Williston  read  everything  to  him  and  for  him ;  the 
ear  took  the  place  of  the  eye,  oral  of  written  in- 
struction, somewhat  as  in  the  primitive  ages ;  he 
remembered  whatever  he  heard,  and  was  remark- 
ably well  informed  on  all  subjects  of  general  and 
practical  interest.  He  educated  himself  by  the 
discipline  of  necessity,  and  the  rub  and  polish  of 
intelligent  work,  and  the  attritions  of  business,  and 
association  with  cultivated  men  and  women,  and 
observation  of  men  and  things,  and  travel  in  his 
own  country  a:^d  in  foreign  lands,  and  faithful  im- 
provement of  every  opportunity  for  learning  and 
general  culture.  Thus  he  acquired  an  education  that 
fitted  him  better  than  any  mere  book  knowledge 
for  the  work  to  which  he  was  called,  and  qualified 

7 


50  COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOUESE. 

him,  not  indeed  to  shine  in  the  pulpit,  or  on  the 
platform,  or  in  the  popular  assembly  (for  he  was 
neither  born  nor  trained  to  be  an  orator),  but  to 
adorn  private,  social  and  public  life. 

A  benignant  countenance,  a  commanding  and  yet 
winning  presence,  gentle  speech  and  courteous  man- 
ners were  no  unimportant  elements  of  his  power  and 
influence.  He  was  a  gentleman,  not  only  in  the  par- 
lor and  the  social  circle,  but  in  the  office,  in  the 
bank,  on  the  street,  and  in  all  his  business  relations. 
His  gentle  manners  and  winning  ways  attracted 
strangers,  won  the  hearts  of  his  workmen,  and  pre- 
disposed merchants  and  manufacturers  to  transact 
business  with  him.  He  had  an  eye  for  beauty.  He 
cultivated  a  taste  for  architecture  and  works  of  art. 
As  his  means  enlarged,  his  style  of  dress,  his 
manner  of  living,  his  house  and  furniture  and 
grounds  were  attractive  as  became  a  gentleman  in 
his  station,  and  he  adorned  his  native  place  with 
public  edifices  in  which  utility  and  beauty  were 
most  happily  combined. 

The  haljits  of  economy  and  industry,  in  which 
he  was  brought  up  from  his  childhood,  and  to 
which  he  adhered  through  all  his  subsequent  life, 
were  among  the  most  obvious  and  direct  means 
of  his   prosperity.      He    never   wasted    either   time 


COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE.  51 

or  money.  At  the  summit  of  his  wealth  and  lib- 
erahty,  he  was  never  above  the  practice  of  econ- 
omy; and  with  good  reason,  for  economy  was  the 
very  foundation  both  of  his  wealth  and  his  liber- 
ality. Even  so  our  Lord,  after  feeding  thousands 
miraculously  with  a  few  loaves  and  fishes,  bade  his 
disciples  "  Gather  up  the  fragments  that  remain, 
that  nothing  may  be  lost."  He  was  always  a  man 
of  indefatigable  industry.  In  his  early  life,  he 
worked  hard  with  his  hands;  in  middle  life  and 
old  age,  he  worked  equally  hard  with  his  mind. 
Like  the  celebrated  painter,  he  mixed  all  his  colors 
with  brains.  Till  he  had  passed  the  prime  of  life, 
he  used  to  rise  at  five  and  breakfast  at  six ;  then 
followed  the  devotions  of  the  family  and  the  closet, 
which  he  never  omitted,  however  great  the  pres- 
sure and  hurry  of  business.  Then  he  would  fol- 
low his  business,  or  rather  lead  it,  all  day  long, 
working  as  many  hours  as  any  day  laborer;  and 
in  the  evening,  he  was  always  busy  answering 
letters,  reading  newspapers  and  useful  books,  or 
rather  hearing  them  read,  and  devoting  to  the  im- 
provement of  his  mind,  and  the  acquisition  of  use- 
ful knowledge,  every  moment  that  was  not  due  to 
domestic,  social  and  religious  duty.  He  was  never 
too  old  to  learn,  and  never  too  rich  to  be  industrious. 


52  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOUESE. 

This  indefatigable  industry  was  accompanied  and 
made  effectual  by  indomitable  perseverance  and 
unconquerable  resolution.  He  always  considered  and 
reconsidered  any  new  enterprise  of  importance  be- 
fore he  undertook  it,  weighed  it  carefully  in  his 
own  mind  and  in  his  own  room,  where  there  was 
nothing  to  disturb  his  dehberations,  consulted  oth- 
ers if  it  was  a  matter  that  admitted  and  required 
consultation,  and  took  counsel  with  God  in  re- 
peated seasons  of  prayer.  When  he  had  thus  de- 
cided upon  an  undertaldng,  he  executed  it  with 
unhesitating  promptness  and  irresistible  firmness. 
Nothing  could  then  stop  him  but  absolute  impos- 
sibilities. There  was  no  such  word  as  cant  in  his 
vocabulary,  but  /  will,  or  I'll  try,  was  on  every  page 
of  his  dictionary.  If  the  roof  of  the  seminary  build- 
ing blew  oft"  in  the  night,  the  next  morning  the 
men  and  the  materials  were  engaged,  perchance  on 
hand,  for  replacing  it.  If  the  church  was  burned 
to  the  ground,  or  almost  demolished  by  the  fall 
of  the  steeple,  nothing  was  to  be  done  but  to  re- 
build it  at  once  in  better  style  than  ever.  If  a 
mill-dam  was  swept  away  the  first  time  the  water 
was  let  in,  and  the  quicksands  rendered  it  im- 
practicable to  rebuild  it  on  the  same  spot,  it 
could   and  should  be  constructed  a  little  higher  up 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOUESE.  53 

the  stream ;  and  it  was  done  at  an  expense  of 
twenty  or  thirty  thousand  dollars  ;  but  it  brought 
him  hundreds  of  thousands  in  the  end.  These  two 
things,  caution  and  deliberation  in  deciding,  and 
then  promptness  and  firmness  in  executing — these 
two  things  he  was  accustomed  to  consider  the 
main  secret  of  his  success  in  business. 

There  are  two  other  things  which  stand  in  a 
similar  relation  to  each  other,  which  I  cannot  but 
think,  were  scarcely  less  conducive  to  his  great 
prosperity.  The  first  is,  that  he  attended  to  his 
own  business.  He  not  only  oversaw  and  directed 
the  whole,  but  he  looked  with  his  OAvn  eyes  into 
the  minutest  details.  Perhaps  he  carried  this  to 
an  unnecessary  minuteness  that  was  exhausting  to 
himself  and  tedious  to  his  factors  and  agents.  I 
have  heard  this  criticism.  But  he  was  fully  per- 
suaded that  it  was  essential  to  success.  And  Frank- 
lin seems  to  have  been  of  the  same  opinion : 

He  that  by  the  plow  would  thrive, 
Himself  must  either  hold  oi-  drive. 

Take  care  of  the  pennies  and  the  pounds  will  take 
care  of  themselves.  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  con- 
stant presence  of  his  eye  and  his  hand  was  worth 
thousands  of  dollars  to  his  business,  every  year,  to 


54  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

the  very  last  year  of  his  Ufe.  The  vakie  of  that 
constant  presence  and  mflucnce  not  only  to  his 
business,  but  to  the  town,  to  the  Seminary,  and 
even  to  Amherst  College,  we  can  fully  appreciate, 
like  many  of  our  richest  blessings,  only  by  its 
loss.  I  am  confident  we  shall  all  estimate  it  far 
higher  ten  years  hence  than  we  do  to-day. 

While  he  was  thus  watchful  and  careful  in  the 
supervision  of  his  own  affairs,  in  beautiful  equipoise 
with  this,  like  those  centripetal  and  centrifugal 
forces  which  preserve  the  equilibrium  of  the  ma- 
terial universe,  he  was  not  less  remarkable  for  the 
wisdom  and  skill  with  which  he  selected  and  em- 
ployed the  agency  of  others.  He  had  a  rare  power 
of  discerning  character.  He  seldom  mistook  in  his 
judgment  of  men.  I  have  myself  had  a  great 
deal  to  do  with  him  in  canvassing  the  merits  of 
teachers  and  preachers;  and  I  have  always  been 
struck  with  his  wisdom  and  discernment.  In  the 
sphere  of  his  own  business,  his  judgment  would, 
of  course,  be  still  more  unerring.  He  always 
thought  himself  fortunate — I  think  he  was  also  wise 
— in  obtaining  the  very  best  men,  at  once  capable 
and  faithful,  for  partners,  superintendents,  agents 
and  employees  of  every  kind  in  his  business.  And 
this,  in  my  opinion,  was  among  the  main  secrets  of 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE.  55 

his  success.  It  always  has  been  a  chief  element  of 
power  and  greatness  in  the  history  of  great  men. 
It  is  only  a  few  things,  at  most,  that  any  man  can 
see  directly  wdth  his  ow^n  eyes  and  do  with  his 
own  hands.  The  rest  he  must  accomplish  through 
the  agency  of  other  men.  He  therefore  who  know^s 
how  to  find  the  right  men  and  put  them  in  the 
right  place — as  Socrates,  that  profound  thinker  and 
observer  of  human  affairs,  has  remarked — he  it  is 
that  accomplishes  almost  without  fail  wdiatever  he 
undertakes. 

He  not  only  found  superior  men  to  co-operate 
with  him,  but  wdiat  was  more,  what  was  a  striking 
proof  of  his  own  greatness,  he  developed  them,  he 
trained  them,  he  made  them — made  them  not  merely 
his  agents  but  his  partners  and  coadjutors,  and,  like 
those  institutions  which  he  founded,  left  them  to 
live  when  he  was  dead,  to  work  when  his  work 
was  done,  to  continue  and  extend  his  business,  to 
widen  and  deepen  his  influence,  to  beautify  and 
build  up  Easthampton,  to  support  and  strengthen 
Payson  Church,  and,  in  person  and  through  those 
whom  they  in  like  manner  shall  raise  up,  to  foster 
and  found  colleges,  seminaries,  missions  and  char- 
itable institutions  in  this  vicinity,  in  this  and  in 
other   lands,  that  shall  not  only  last   but  live   and 


56  COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE. 

do   o'ood  and   bless   the    church  and    the   world    till 
time  shall  be  no  more. 

Besides  the  wise  and  good  men  whom  he 
thus  trained  and  educated,  he  had  two  silent  part- 
ners that  were  worth  more  to  him  and  to  his 
business  than  they  all.  The  best  partners  any  man 
can  have — and  every  good  man  may  have  them — 
are  a  prudent,  pious,  loving  wife,  and  a  wise,  kind, 
guarding  and  guiding  Heavenly  Father.  The  man 
who  always  takes  counsel  with  the  unerring  intui- 
tions and  Christian  impulses  of  a  good  wife,  and  with 
the  providence,  word  and  spirit  of  God,  will  seldom, 
if  ever,  go  astray,  and  can  hardly  fail  to  be  a 
wise,  prosperous,  useful  and  happy  man.  And 
such,  I  need  not  say,  was  the  supreme  felicity  of 
Samuel  Williston.  lie  could  meet  the  challenge 
of  the  wise  man  in  the  last  chapter  of  Proverbs 
triumphantly,  and  answer  his  question  without  a 
moment's  hesitation :  "  Who  can  find  a  virtuous 
woman  ?  for  her  price  is  far  above  rabies.  The 
heart  of  her  husband  doth  safely  trust  in  her,  so 
that  he  shall  have  no  need  of  spoil.  She  will  do 
him  good  and  not  evil  all  the  days  of  her  life.  She 
seeketh  wool  and  flax,  and  worketh  willingly  with 
her  hands.  She  is  like  tlie  merchants'  ships,  she 
bringeth     her    food    from   afar.      Her    husband    is 


COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE.  57 

known  in  the'  gates,  when  he  sitteth  among  the 
elders  of  the  land.  She  maketh  fine  linen  and 
selleth  it;  and  delivereth  girdles  unto  the  mer- 
chants. She  openeth  her  mouth  with  wisdom,  and 
in  her  tongue  is  the  law  of  kindness.  Her  chil- 
dren rise  up  and  call  her  blessed ;  her  husband 
also,  and  he  praiseth  her.  Many  daughters  have 
done  virtuously,  but  thou  excellest  them  all."  That 
picture  does  not  need  to  be  labeled. 

With  this  accurate  knowledge  of  men,  w^as  as- 
sociated a  no  less  discriminating  and  correct  dis- 
cernment of  things.  He  kept  himself  well  informed 
in  matters  of  business,  politics,  morals  and  religion. 
He  observed,  he  read,  he  inquired,  he  reflected. 
And  when  he  acted,  it  was  with  such  an  insight 
into  the  present  and  such  a  foresight  of  the  fu- 
ture, that  he  rarely  made  a  mistake  in  his  judg- 
ment of  markets,  stocks  and  prices :  and  business 
men  who  knew  him  w^ere  not  afraid  to  buv  when 
Mr.  Williston  bought,  and  thought  it  wise  to  sell 
wdien  Mr.  Williston  sold.  The  wisdom  and  success 
with  which  he  conducted  his  large  business  amid 
all  the  conflicting  currents,  quicksands  and  breakers 
of  peace  and  war,  of  commercial  changes  and  po- 
litical revolutions,  till  he  had  reached  the  age  of 
three-score    years    and    ten,    show    a    capacity    that 


68  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

could  have  guided  the  ship  of  state  or  the  finances 
of  the  nation,  if  the  helm  had  been  committed  to 
his  hands. 

With  these  high  intellectual  endowments,  he 
united  that  integrity  and  fidelity  to  all  his  engage- 
ments which  alone  can  inspire  confidence,  and  there- 
fore which  alone  can  ensure  lasting  prosperity. 
Almost  at  the  beginning  of  his  business  in  the  great 
cities,  he  had  gained  such  a  character  for  honesty 
and  honor,  that  large  merchants  would  give  him  a 
carte  hlanche  for  their  orders,  and  ask  no  questions 
about  prices,  saying,  '•'  You  know  best — look  at  our 
stock — see  what  we  want,  and  supply  the  deficiency." 
And  this  character  he  never  forfeited.  All  who  had 
dealings  with  him  knew  that  he  would  be  faithful  to 
his  engagements,  and  would  expect  them  to  be 
prompt  in  the  fulfillment  of  theirs.  Scrupulously 
honest  and  conscientious  in  the  minutest  details  of 
business  himself,  he  acted  in  strict  conformity  with 
the  golden  rule,  ^vhen  he  required  the  same  minute 
exactness  of  others  in  business  transactions.  Thus 
he  inculcated  honesty,  while,  at  the  same  time,  he 
inspired  confidence,  in  all  around  him. 

But  he  was  more  than  conscientious.  He  aimed  to 
be  Christian  in  the  management  of  his  business. 
From  the  time  already  mentioned  when   he    renewed 


COMMEMOKATIVE     DISCOURSE.  69 

his  consecration  to  the  service  of  God,  he  regarded 
his  time  and  talents  and  property  and  business,  as  no 
longer  his  own.  The  business  was  the  Lord's,  and 
he  was  merely  the  agent.  The  Lord  was  the  owner 
of  the  property,  and  he  was  only  a  trustee,  an  over- 
seer, a  steward  intrusted  with  the  care  and  manage- 
ment of  it.  Of  course,  he  felt  bound  to  conduct  the 
business  in  accordance  with  the  will  of  the  owner, 
to  pay  over  the  income  at  his  order,  and  to  hold 
the  principal  subject  to  his  disposal.  This,  therefore, 
he  made  the  matter  of  his  daily,  and  almost  hourly 
study,  meditation  and  prayer.  No  other  subject 
occasioned  him  so  much  thought  and  anxiety.  Be- 
sides his  regular  hours  of  prayer,  morning  and  even- 
ing, he  had  his  special  seasons  of  prayer  and  self- 
examination  every  week ;  he  asked  wisdom  from  on 
high  in  ejaculatory  petitions  many  times  a  day,  and 
took  counsel  with  God  and  with  wise  and  good  men 
at  every  suitable  opportunity,  and  all  with  reference 
to  this  more  than  any,  and  perhaps  all  other  ques- 
tions: How  shall  I  best  serve  God  in  the  use  of 
the  property,  and  in  the  conduct  of  the  business 
with  which  he  has  intrusted  me.  And  when  we  have 
taken  into  account  all  the  other  elements  that  en- 
tered directly  and  obviously  into  the  result,  I  cannot 
doubt  that  we  must  reckon  in  the  special  blessing  of 


60  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

Heaven  on  this  method  of  conducting  his  business 
as  the  grand  secret  of  his  prosperity.  Such,  at  any 
rate,  was  the  hght  in  which  he  was  ahvays  in  the 
habit  of  looking  at  the  subject. 

Mr.  WilHston  was  not  naturally  more  generous 
than  other  men.  It  was  the  regenerating,  and  sanc- 
tifying grace  of  God,  that  made  him  such  a  liberal 
giver.  When,  in  their  poverty,  his  parents  persisted 
in  giving  for  charitable  objects,  Samuel,  who  was 
toiling  on  the  farm  for  the  supj^ort  of  the  family, 
and  who  was  not  then  a  converted  man,  sometimes 
doubted  if  it  were  not  an  excess  of  charity.  More 
than  once  I  have  heard  him  sa}^  that  he  thought 
it  hard  when  his  father  subscribed  a  few  dollars  to 
aid  the  college  to  which  he  has,  himself,  given 
hundreds  of  thousands.  He  had  a  natural  love  of 
money,  and  the  value  which  he  attached  to  it  was 
enhanced  by  the  want  of  it  which  he  experienced 
in  early  life,  and  still  further  strengthened  by  the 
very  nature  and  processes  of  the  business  in  which 
tlic  foundations  of  his  fortune  were  laid.  When 
he  began  to  accumulate  rapidly,  ambition,  of  which 
he  was  by  no  means  destitute,  would  most  naturally 
have  conspired  with  the  desire  of  accumulation  and 
impelled  him  in  a  Ijold  career  of  enlarging  his 
business,  investing  his  gains,  and   thus  amassing  an 


COMMEMOEATIVE    DISCOUESE.  61 

immense  property.  From  his  own  testimony,  as 
well  as  from  the  nature  of  the  case  and  the  judg- 
ment of  others,  I  am  led  to  believe  that  it  cost 
him  a  struggle  with  his  natural  inchnations,  and 
his  early  habits — more  of  a  struggle  than  it  does 
many  men — to  distribute  his  income  for  charitable 
objects,  instead  of  investing  it  for  larger,  and  more 
rapid  accumulation.  It  Avas  not  for  his  own  pleas- 
ure or  reputation — such  was  his  testimony  on  the 
subject — it  was  not  for  his  own  present  gratification 
or  future  fame  that  he  gave  away  his  thousands, 
and  hundreds  of  thousands.  But,  if  he  knew  his 
own  heart,  it  was  from  Christian  principle ;  it 
was  from  a  sense  of  duty  to  God  and  mankind. 
The  love  of  Christ  constrained  him,  and  no  other 
power  could  have  impelled  him  to  such  labors, 
self-denials    and  sacrifices. 

Benevolence  was  not  so  much  a  passion  as  a 
principle  with  Mr.  WillistoUj  and  he  conducted  his 
charities  with  just  as  much  method  and  s^^stem  as 
he  did  his  business.  ''  Method  is  the  very  hinge 
of  business,"  was  the  placard  which  was  ever  be- 
fore the  eyes  of  the  workmen  in  his  button  mill. 
The  same  motto  governed  his  whole  religious  life. 
He  planned  his  giving  on  the  same  magnificent 
scale,  and  with  the   same  thoughtful  forecast  as  he 


62  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

did  his  manufacturing;  adhered  to  his  beneficent 
phms,  promises  and  engagements,  with  the  same 
fixed  purpose ;  disbursed  charities  as  regularly  and 
systematically  as  he  paid  debts  or  wages ;  met 
calls  for  extraordinary  donations,  as  promptly  and 
liberally,  as  hopefully  and  courageously  as  he  did 
unforeseen  exigencies  in  his  business,  and  was 
as  ready  to  borrow  money,  if  need  be,  for  the  one 
purpose  as  for  the  other.  Indeed,  his  pledges 
were  almost  always  in  advance  of  his  receipts. 
He  pledged  the  money  for  Williston  Seminary, 
and  for  each  of  his  $50,000  donations  to  Amherst 
College,  before  he  had  made  it,  and  he  often  did 
the  same  to  meet  an  emergency  of  the  American 
Board  and  of  Home  Missions.  He  would  no  more 
have  lost  a  great  opportunity  of  doing  good  for 
want  of  money,  actually  in  hand,  than  he  would 
for  that  reason,  have  let  slip  a  rare  chance  of  mak- 
ing a  pecuniary  investment.  In  short,  nothing 
shows  more  clearly  the  consistency  and  true  great- 
ness of  his  character,  than  the  fact  that  he  was  so 
manifestly  one  and  the  same  man,  acting  on  the 
same  principles,  and  by  the  same  methods,  whether 
in  his  business  or  his  religion.  He  made  a  re- 
ligion of  his  business,  and  he  made  a  business  of 
his  religion.     They  were  only  different  departments 


COMMEMOEATIVE    DISCOURSE.  63 

of  the  same  great  life-work  wherein  the  business 
methodized,  informed  and  vitalized  the  religion, 
while  the  religion,  in  turn,  elevated,  hallowed  and 
transfigured  the  business.  In  this,  as  in  many 
other  thinojs,  he  showed  himself  a  o-enuine  son  of 
the  Puritans,  though  with  better  manners  and  in 
a  happier  age.  In  this  he  was  like  Paul  and 
John ;    nay,   in   this   he   was  like  Christ. 

The  aggregate  of  Mr.  Williston's  charities,  in 
his  life-time,  must  have  exceeded  a  million  of  dol- 
lars. His  will  provides  for  the  distribution  of 
from  one-half  to  three-quarters  of  a  million  more. 
Considerably  more  than  half  of  this  magnificent 
sum  he  gave  to  two  institutions.  So  far  from 
regretting  that  he  had  done  so,  his  only  regret 
as  he  drew  near  to  the  time  when  he  must  give 
an  account  of  his  stewardship,  was,  that  he  could 
not  do  more — that  he  could  not  endow  the  col- 
lege as  richly  as  he  did  the  seminary,  and  furnish 
it  as  amply  for  its  great  and  good  work.  This 
regret  —  I  state  it  on  the  very  best  authority — 
this  regret  weighed  on  his  heart,  wore  upon  his 
health,  and  helped  to  shorten  his  life.  The  sor- 
est trial  of  his  later  years  was,  not  the  loss  of 
property,  not  the  mortification  of  com]3arative 
failure   in  his  last  business   enterprise,   but  that  he 


64  COMMEMOEATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

was  thereby  prevented  from  providing  his  beloved 
Amherst  with  the  pecuniary  means  of  realizing 
his   exalted   idea  of  a   Christian   college. 

Providence  had  obviously  raised  him  up  and 
marked  him  out  to  be  a  founder  of  educational 
institutions  His  own  experience,  both  positive 
and  negative,  his  high  appreciation  of  what  edu- 
cation he  had,  and  his  passionate  desire,  his  long 
hunger  and  intense  thirst  for  more,  impressed 
him  deeply  with  the  value  of  the  higher  educa- 
tion given  in  academies  and  colleges.  His  expe- 
rience as  a  charity  student  at  Phillips  Academy 
showed  him  the  necessity  of  funds  and  endow- 
ments to  such  institutions.  His  subsequent  pros- 
perity gave  him  the  means  of  providing  such 
funds.  His  religious  character  and  experience 
emphasized  to  him  the  unspeakable  worth  of  Chris- 
tian seminaries  of  learning;.  His  views  and  feel- 
ings  and  motives  in  this  regard  were  precisely 
such  as  inspired  the  original  founders  of  Amherst 
College.  He  wished  to  found  and  foster  institu- 
tions for  the  glory  of  God,  and  the  salvation  of 
men  ;  for  the  propagation  of  truth  and  righteous- 
ness in  the  earth.  He  saw  that  there  was  room 
for  another  and  better  Phillips  Academy,  in  the 
valley   of    the    Connecticut.       He    felt    that    there 


COMMEMORATIYE     DISCOURSE.  66 

was  an  imperative  demand  for  another  college  as 
richly  endowed  as  Harvard,  but  more  evangelical, 
more  Christian,  in  old  Massachusetts.  And  he 
believed  that  there  could  be  no  better  location 
for  such  institutions,  than  old  Hampshire,  his 
native  county,  wdiich,  as  statistics  show^ed,  already 
surpassed  all  other  counties  in  its  percentage  of 
educated  men  and  of  church  members.  He  be- 
lieved in  endowing  institutions  of  learning  and  re- 
ligion. He  had  good  reason  for  this;  therein  as 
we  have  seen,  he  placed  himself  among  the  wisest, 
greatest,  and  most  far-seeing  of  mankind.  And 
whatever  Mr.  Williston  did,  he  believed  in  doing 
it  well.  He  always  made,  and  provided  for,  the 
best  things  of  their  kind — the  best  houses,  the 
best  mills,  the  best  machinery,  the  best  fabrics, 
the  best  church  edifices,  the  best  colleges  and  sem- 
inaries of  learning ;  believing  this  to  be  at  once 
the  truest  economy  and  the  wisest  policy.  Like 
the  historians  and  artists  of  ancient  Greece,  he 
wished  his  work  to  endure  and  be  "  a  possession 
forever  ;"  and  it  is  only  the  best  structures,  those 
which   cost  time  and  money,  that    endure. 

Besides  these  two  great  and  permanent  institu- 
tions, however,  he  was  a  constant  and  liberal 
giver  to  a  great  variety  of  literary,  charitable  and 

9 


66  COMMEMOIIATIVE     DISCOUESE. 

religious  objects.  He  contributed  liberally,  very  lib- 
erally to  the  support  of  the  gospel  at  home.  He 
was  an  unfailing  contributor  to  the  regular  period- 
ical charities  of  the  church  of  which  he  was  a 
member.  His  donations  to  the  great  national  so- 
cieties, especially  for  the  freedmen  and  home  and 
foreign  missions,  were  as  constant  as  the  seasons, 
and  as  generous  as  his  resources  w^ere  large.  He 
sowed  beside  all  waters,  at  the  same  time  that 
he  planted  trees,  and  laid  foundations  for  many 
generations. 

Those  who  are  skilled  in  such  calculations  can 
easily  calculate  what  this  million  of  dollars  which 
Mr.  Williston  distributed  in  his  life-time,  would  have 
amounted  to  at  the  time  of  his  death,  if  it  had  all 
been  invested  as  fast  as  it  accrued  at  compound 
interest ;  and  we  all  know  it  would  have  been  a 
vast  sum ;  it  would  have  made  one  of  the  richest 
men  of  this  age  of  millionaires.  And  how  easy  it 
would  have  been  for  him  when  he  had  made,  we 
will  say,  his  first  fifty  or  hundred  thousand  dollars, 
instead  of  expending  so  much  of  it  for  charitable 
purposes,  or  even  laying  it  out  in  the  extension  of 
his  business,  to  have  invested  it  all,  as  fast  as  it 
came  in,  in  docks  and  bonds  and  rtiortgages.  But 
where  would  Easthampton  then  have  been ;   where 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE.  67 

then  would  have  been  Williston  Seminary ;  what 
then  would  have  become  of  Amherst  College ;  and 
where  would  our  Missionary  Boards  and  Sanitary 
and  Christian  Commissions  have  looked  for  help  in 
their  exigencies  ?  It  would  have  been  a  luxury 
for  a  selfish  miser — it  would  have  been  a  natural 
and  an  intellectual  pleasure  for  Mr.  Williston  to 
have  sat  still  and  seen  his  property  roll  up,  tens  of 
thousands,  hundreds  of  thousands,  millions,  per- 
chance tens  of  millions,  into  a  more  than  princely 
fortune.  But  how  much  purer  and  sweeter  the 
pleasure  of  seeing  his  native  town  prosper,  and  the 
Seminary  that  bears  his  name  grow,  and  the  College 
that  he  saved  extending  its  influence — how  much 
greater  the  luxury  of  employing  and  supporting 
hundreds  of  families  and  thousands  of  hands  in  his 
business,  and  enlightening  the  eyes,  gladdening  the 
hearts,  saving  the  souls  of  a  multitude  that  no  man 
can  number,  in  this  and  in  other  lands,  by  the 
fruits  of  his  beneficence !  Mr.  Williston  had  the 
wisdom  to  make  this  better  choice,  and  the  satis- 
faction of  seeing  in  part  its  happy  results;  and  I 
bless  God  that  we  whom  he  has  associated  with 
himself  in  some  of  his  counsels  and  trusts,  have 
been  permitted  to  rejoice  with  him  in  this  supreme 
satisfaction. 


68  COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOUESE. 

Mr.  Williston  had  an  ear  for  music  j  he  enjoyed 
highly  and  intelligently  appreciated,  as  we  all  know, 
the  performances  of  the  choice  bands  which  he  was 
at  so  much  jDains  and  expense  to  procure  for  the 
Anniversaries  of  Williston  Seminary.  But  he  once 
said  to  me  that  "  the  hum  of  the  factory  was  sweeter 
music  than  the  best  concert  he  ever  heard."  There 
was  a  o-enuine  horn  hudness  man.  But  that  was 
not  the  whole  sigrnificance  of  the  remark.  In  order 
to  understand  all  the  sweetness  of  that  music,  the 
end  which  he  sought  in  his  business  must  be  taken 
into  consideration,  as  well  as  the  means  to  that 
end.  There  is  no  happiness  for  man  on  earth  like 
that  of  a  great  and  good  work  prosecuted  diligently, 
enthusiastically,  for  a  great  and  good  end.  That  was 
the  music  wdiich  filled  the  ear  and  inspired  the  soul 
of  Mr.  Williston.  I  pity  the  man  who  hath  none 
of  this  music  in  him.  He  is  fit  for  treason,  strata- 
gems and  spoils. 

Mr.  Williston  was  not  a  mere  accumulator  of 
money.  He  was  a  creator  of  values.  He  was  an 
inventor  of  new  fabrics,  and  new  ways  and  means 
for  their  manufacture.  He  w^as  an  originator  of 
new  enterprises.  He  was  the  first  and  for  some 
time  the  ouly  manufacturer  of  covered  buttons  in 
the  country.     The  manufacture  of  elastic  suspenders 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE.  69 

was  also  a  new  industry.  Most  of  the  other  manu- 
factures which  he  and  his  partners  introduced  into 
Easthampton  were  comparatively  new  enterprises. 
He  kept  in  advance  of  the  line  of  march  in  trade 
and  manufactures,  and  by  the  time  the  rest  of  the 
line  came  up  so  as  to  share  the  business  and  divide 
the  profits,  he  was  ready,  if  necessary,  to  enter 
upon  some  new  and  more  remunerative  business. 
At  the  same  time,  so  far-seeing  and  so  conservative 
have  been  his  plans,  that  the  first  button  company 
of  the  country  is  now  the  largest  covered-button 
concern  in  the  world ;  and  most  of  the  other  com- 
panies still  take  the  lead  in  their  several  lines  of 
business.  Williston  Seminary,  founded  to  be  a  clas- 
sical school  of  the  hiu;hest  order  and  to  become  an 
English  college,  was  a  new  idea;  or,  rather,  it  was 
at  once  novel  and  conservative — it  was,  like  the 
works  of  God  and  all  the  greatest  and  best  works 
of  men,  a  development  and  at  the  same  time  a  crea- 
tion. And  the  way  in  which  he  provided  in  his 
will  for  its  continued  growth  and  progress  for  at 
least  a  generation  or  two  to  come,  was  as  unique  as 
the  institution  itself,  and  as  sagacious  as  it  was 
original  and  peculiar. 

An  almost  uninterrupted  tide  of  prosperity  bore 
Mr.  Williston  along  from    year   to    year,  and  from 


70  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

one  new  and  successful  enterprise  to  another,  for 
more  than  thirty  years,  until  in  1866,  when  he 
was  already  more  than  three-score  years  and  ten, 
he  entered  upon  by  far  the  largest  and  most  ad- 
venturous of  all  his  undertakings;  the  building 
of  the  last  Williston  mill  and  the  manuflicture  of 
cotton  sewing  thread.  This  proved  a  failure, 
cost  him  the  direct  loss  of  half  a  million  of 
money,  and  indirectl}^  no  one  can  calculate  how 
much  more,  oppressed  his  declining  years  with 
disappointment  and  anxiety,  brought  on  a  tortur- 
ing, chronic,  incurable  disease,  and  shortened  his 
days  by  perhaps  a  decade  of  years  that  should 
have  been  the  most  fruitful  and  happy  years  of 
his  life.  His  own  judgment  in  review  of  this 
period  of  life  is  contained  in  the  last  letter 
which  I  ever  received  from  him,  in  which  he  says, 
"  My  experience  leads  me  to  think  that  a  man 
of  seventy  years  should  draw  his  business  into  a 
smaller  compass  rather  than  enlarge  it."  It  is 
understood  that  he  did  not  follow  the  advice  of 
one  of  his  silent  partners  in  this  move.  Whether 
he  misunderstood  the  counsel  of  the  other,  or 
whether  a  kind  and  wise  Providence  intended  to 
teach  him  lessons  in  the  school  of  adversity  that 
he    could   never    have   learned    in    prosperity,    and 


COMMEMOKATIVE    DISCOURSE.  71 

to  bestow  on  him  inward  and  spiritual  blessings 
of  far  more  value  than  money,  is  a  question 
which  can  be  answered  only  in  the  light  of  an- 
other world.  It  is  not  strange,  however,  that  he 
took  that  unfortunate  step.  His  prosperity  was  at 
the  spring-tide.  The  successes  and  gains  of  the 
war  were  enormous.  He  was  flush  Avith  health, 
strength,  courage,  hope,  self-reliance  and  trust  in 
God.  Ambition  and  benevolence  both  seemed  to 
bid  him  go  forward.  That  music  which  so  charmed 
and  inspired  him  at  once  as  a  business  man  and 
a  Christian,  filled  his  ears  and  impelled  him  on- 
w^ard.  So  far  as  success  in  business  was  con- 
cerned, it  was  now  destined  to  prove  the  song  of 
the  sirens.  But  it  had  been  the  song  of  the  seraphs 
in  all  his  p)i'evious  life,  and  how  was  he  to  dis- 
tinguish ?  But,  perhaps,  this  sore  trial  was  need- 
ful for  his  spiritual  good.  Doubtless,  on  the  whole, 
it  was  wisely  ordered,  and  sanctified  and  over- 
ruled to  work  in  him  the  peaceable  fruits  of 
righteousness.  Certainly  he  developed  under  its 
influence  in  his  latter  days  some  of  the  sweetest, 
loveliest,  richest  fruits  of  his  broad,  deep  and  man- 
ifold  character. 

He  has  been  accused,  perhaps  I  should   say  sus- 
pected,  of  being    ambitious    and   of  giving,   not  so 


/Z  COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE. 

much  for  the  sake  of  alleviatino;  son'ow  and  doino; 
good,  as  of  gaining  a  name.  But  what  great  and 
good  man  is  not  ambitious  ?  If  it  is  a  weakness, 
it  is  the  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds.  When 
wisely  guided  and  properly  controlled,  it  is  the 
strongest  and  grandest  impulse  to  great  achieve- 
ments. A  sanctified  ambition  is  one  of  the  holi- 
est motives  to  good'  works.  And  who  does  not 
aspire  to  a  good  name  ?  Has  not  inspiration  pro- 
nounced it  to  be  better  than  precious  ointment  ? 
In  due  subordination  to  other  and  higher  princi- 
ples, the  desire  to  perpetuate  one's  name  is  a 
proper  motive  for  a  man  and  a  Christian.  And 
if  ever  a  man  fully  resolved  and  strove  earnestly 
to  keep  this  motive  in  complete  subordination  to 
the  glory  of  God  and  the  good  of  mankind,  that 
man — if  I  knew  him,  and  if  he  knew  himself — 
that  man  was  Mr.  Williston.  When  a  great  ob- 
ject was  to  be  accomplished,  he  was  as  willing  to 
give  large  sums  of  money  without  his  name  as 
with  it.  Witness  his  munificent  donation  to  Walker 
Hall  in  Amherst,  which  was  to  bear  the  name  of 
another  donor,  and  his  repeated  efforts  to  obtain 
still  larger  donations  both  from  Dr.  Walker  and 
Mr.  Hitchcock,  whom  a  selfish  ambition  would 
rather  have   discouraged  and  set  aside  as  rivals,  as 


COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE.  73 

competitors  for  the  highest  place  among  the  friends 
and  patrons  of  the  institution.  It  was  not  merely 
to  perpetuate  his  own  memory  that  he  gave  his 
name  to  the  seminary,  and  the  foundations  which 
he  established.  It  was  essential  to  the  prosperity 
and  usefulness  of  Williston  Seminary  that  it  should 
be  called,  not  like  high  schools  and  small  academies, 
by  the  name  of  the  place,  but  like  other  larger  and 
better  endowed  institutions,  by  the  name  of  the 
founder ;  and  for  this  reason,  he  was  urged  by  his 
wisest  and  best  counselors,  to  give  it  his  name.  It 
was  for  the  interest  of  Amherst  College  that  his 
foundations  and  his  college  edifice,  should  be  called 
by  his  name,  as  an  advertisement  to  the  public, 
that  it  was  at  least,  partially  endowed,  and  also  as 
an  example  and  an  inducement  to  others  to  do 
likewise.  And  if  the  Trustees  should  vote  to  call 
the  institution  "  Williston  College,  or  the  University 
at  Amherst,"  as  he  forbade  them  to  do  w^hile  he 
lived,  but  as  in  gratitude  and  honor  they  are  bound 
to  do,  now  that  he  is  dead,  and  as  every  officer  and 
every  student  who  was  connected  with  it,  when  he 
made  the  donation  that  saved  it,  would  hold  up  both 
hands  to  have  them  do,  it  would  not  redound  more 
to  the  honor  of  the  donor,  than  it  would  conduce 
to  the  reputation  and  prosperity  of  the  in.stitution. 

10 


74  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

He  has  been  charged  with  driving  sharp  bargains, 
getting  a  great  deal  of  work  out  of  his  men,  and 
too  rigidly  exacting  every  cent  of  his  dues.  It  is 
a  charge  wliich  is  often  made  against  those  who 
have  grown  rich  by  close  calculations,  careful 
watching  of  the  markets  and  nice  balancing  of 
wages  and  prices,  especially  in  the  manufacture 
and  sale  of  small  articles  at  an  almost  infinites- 
imally  small  profit  on  each  article.  Sometimes  it 
is  made  honestly  and  candidly,  but  frequently,  I 
suspect,  in  sheer  envy  and  jealousy;  and  generally, 
I  think,  it  is  made  ignorantly,  without  any  real 
consideration  of  the  facts  or  the  principles  in- 
volved. The  same  charge  was  made  against  Sam- 
uel Jiudgett,  the  Christian  merchant  and  philan- 
thropist of  Kingswood,  near  Bristol,  England,  who 
began  his  career  of  money-making  and  money- 
saving  in  his  boyhood,  when  he  j^icked  up  a  horse- 
shoe, went  three  miles  with  it  and  got  a  penny 
for  it,  and  continued  it  till  he  gave  away  f  10,000 
a  year  for  philanthropic  objects.  And  the  charge 
was  answered  at  length,  and  I  think  conclusively, 
by  Mr.  Bayne  in  his  "  Christian  Life."  The  chief 
points  of  his  answer  are  briefly  these :  To  buy 
cheaj)  and  sell  dear  is  the  law  of  trade  and  the 
only   way   fortunes   are   made.      In   this  process  he 


COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOUESE.  75 

who  has  the  capital  and  the  faculty  will  inevitably 
have  the  advantao;e  over  him  who  has  not.  It 
you  see  the  gleam  of  a  gold  vein  where  I  saw 
only  clay,  the  reward  is  justly  yours;  if  you  know 
the  ground  where  corn  will  grow  better  than  I, 
your  sheaves  must  be  more  numerous  than  mine ; 
if  you  have  stronger  sinews  and  more  persever- 
ance, and  choose  to  toil  for  hours  in  the  wester- 
ing sun  after  I  have  unyoked  my  team,  you  must 
lay  a  wider  field  under  seed  than  I.  The  pearls 
are  for  him  that  can  and  will  dive,  the  golden 
apples  for  him  that  can  and  will  climb.  His  men 
had  a  profound  knowledge  that  he  was  not  to  be 
trifled  with.  The  incompetent  and  the  indolent 
were  promptly  discharged.  A  man  must  perform 
what  he  undertook,  or  he  must  go.  "  Why,  sir," 
said  one  who  had  been  long  in  his  service,  "■  I  do 
believe  as  /le  would  get,  ay,  just  twice  as  much 
work  out  o'  a  man  in  a  week  as  another  master." 
Business  is  one  thing  and  charity  is  another. 
Business  must  be  conducted  in  business  ways  and 
on  business  principles.  Now,  large  gains  by  means 
of  small  profits  on  large  sales  is  a  prime  rule,  is 
almost  a  first  principle  of  success  in  trade  or  man- 
ufactures. And  to  demand  that  this  shall  be  criven 
up   in   one   instance — whether   it   be   by  increase  of 


I  0  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

wages,  reduction  of  prices,  relaxation  of  services 
or  release  of  debts,  is  virtually  to  demand  that  it 
shall  be  given  up  in  all  cases ;  and  to  give  it  up 
in  all  cases  were  to  knock  out  the  very  corner- 
stone both  of  individual  success  and  of  public 
prosperity.  All  that  can  be  demanded  under  the 
name  of  manufacturing  or  mercantile  honor  is, 
not  charity,  but  justice  and  fairness.  And  this, 
not  charity,  but  justice  and  fairness,  is  at  once  for 
the  individual  weal  and  for  the  public  good.  It 
is  nature's  own  way  of  spurring  on  the  indolent 
and  having  her  work  well  done ;  and  however  in- 
dividuals may  smart  or  grumble,  it  most  effectually 
subserves  the  interests  of  the  community. 

He  sometimes  gave  offence  to  employees  by  the 
rare  truthfulness  and  frankness  with  which  he  told 
them  what  was  for  their  good.  He  never  feared 
to  speak  out  what  he  believed  to  be  his  own 
rights,  or  their  duties  in  the  relation  that  existed 
between  them.  He  never  would  conceal  or  dis- 
guise the  truth  when,  in  his  opinion,  justice  to 
himself  or  the  welfare  of  others  required  it  to  be 
spoken.  Severe  in  judging  himself,  he  some- 
times became  conscious  that  he  had  been  too  se- 
vere in  censuring  others,  and  then  he  was  just  as 
frank   in  retracting  the  censure  as  he  had  been  in 


COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE.  77 

uttering  it,  aiid  just  as  ready  to  make  honorable 
amends  to  the  humblest  workman  as  he  would 
have  been  to  a  person  of  the  most  exalted  station. 
He  not  only  condescended  to  men  of  low  estate, 
but  when  time  permitted,  and  as  occasion  required, 
he  conversed  with  them  in  the  most  intimate  and 
winning  wa3^  He  sympathized  with  the  j^oor,  for 
he  had  been  poor,  and  he  proved  himself  to  them 
a  friend  in  need  and  so  a  friend  indeed.  For  he  not 
only  gave  them  money,  which  is  a  comparatively 
easy  thing  for  a  man  of  wealth  to  do,  but  what  is 
far  better,  he  gave  them  thought  and  care  and 
wise  counsel ;  he  tried  to  put  them  in  the  way 
of  earning  a  livelihood  for  themselves ;  he  helped 
them  to  form  habits  of  industry,  economy,  tem- 
perance and  piety ;  he  suffered  with  them  in  their 
sorrows  and  rejoiced  with  them  in  their  prosperity; 
he  was  always  faithful  and  true  to  them,  though 
they  did  not  always  fulfill  their  promises  to  him ; 
in  short,  he  was  a  father  to  them,  and  like  their 
Father  in  Heaven,  he  was  kind  even  to  the  un- 
thankful and  the  evil.  I  have  in  my  possession 
the  strongest  written  testimonies  to  this  effect, 
accompanied  by  the  most  touching  expressions  of 
gratitude  and  affection  from  those  whom  he  thus 
befriended    in    health    and    in    sickness,    and    whom 


78  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

he  thus  lifted  from  extreme  poverty  to  circum- 
stances of  comparative    comfort  and   independence. 

Mr.  Williston's  character  was  not  perfect,  any 
more  than  his  judgment  was  infaUible.  Doubtless 
he  had  much  to  contend  with.  Great  men,  strong 
natures  always  have.  But  who  of  us  is  perfect.  He 
that  is  without  sin  among  you,  let  him  cast  the  first 
stone.  And  when  we  look  at  the  pure,  solid,  mas- 
sive orold  of  his  noble  character  and  his  useful  life, 
the  canker  and  rust  of  real  faults  is  scarcely  dis- 
cernible ;  while  some  of  these  alleged  faults  are 
seen  to  be  only  the  alloy  which  is  essential  to  the 
value  and   use  of  the  current  coin. 

The  history  of  Mr.  Williston's  private  life  was 
quite  peculiar.  His  domestic  and  social  affections 
were  tender  and  strong.  When  he  had  already 
come  to  be  a  prosperous  and,  for  those  times,  a 
wealthy  man,  a  friend  congratulated  him  on  his  suc- 
cess in  business.  His  reply  was,  "  I  would  gladly 
give  up  every  dollar  and  begin  life  a  poor  man,  if  I 
could  only  have  back  my  children  that  I  have  lost." 
If  we  may  trust  the  testimony  of  their  grandmother 
Williston — a  partial,  perhaps,  and  yet  a  competent 
and  credible  witness — they  were  singularly  lovely 
and  beautiful  children,  constitutionally,  if  not  even 
morbidly,  gentle,  amiable   and   religious,  such   chil- 


COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE.  79 

dren,  "  with  less  of  earth  in  them  than  heaven," 
as  give  us  glimpses  of  what  the  children  of  God 
are  in  their  Father's  house,  and  so,  as  "fire  ascend- 
ing seeks  the  sun,"  they  Avere  soon  translated  to 
their  proper  sphere.  Ere  this,  we  may  believe, 
the}^  have  been  restored  to  the  embrace  of  their 
loving,  longing  father.  Perhaps  they  were  wait- 
ing to  welcome  him  at  the  heavenlj^  gates,  the 
same  yet  how  different,  still  childlike  and  dis- 
tinctly recognizable,  yet  in  what  loftier  stature  and 
in  such  forms  of  seraphic  beauty  and  glory  as  we 
can  scarcely  imagine. 

He  loved  also  his  adopted  children,  cherished 
them  in  their  childhood,  cared  for  their  education, 
rejoiced  in  their  ripening  virtues  and  graces,  and 
felt,  as  well  he  might,  all  a  father's  complacency  in 
their  character,  pleasure  in  their  prosperity,  pride 
and  exultation  in  their  honors  and  successes.'  And 
when  at  the  celebration  of  their  golden  wedding, 
their  eight  children  (counting  husbands  and  wives) 
and  their  sixteen  grandchildren  were  gathered  about 
them  at  the  old  homestead,  it  was  as  pretty  a  pic- 
ture as  is  often  seen  in  this  imperfect  world;  nothing 
seemed  wanting  to  make  their  happiness  complete. 

And  that  husband  and  wife,  during  the  fifty-two 
years   that    they  were    spared    to    each    other,   how 


80  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

bad  they  shared  each  other's  toils  and  cares,  con- 
sulted each  other's  interests  and  wishes,  and  known 
each  other's  inmost  thoughts  and  feelings  as  if  they 
were  their  own;  how  had  they  planned  and  prayed 
and  sorrowed  and  rejoiced  together ;  how  had  they 
always  traveled  together  and  returned  together, 
visited  or  staid  at  home  together,  gone  out  and 
come  in  and  risen  up  and  sat  down  together,  and 
lived  and  moved  and  had  their  being  in  and  for 
each  other,  always  not  only  one  flesh,  but  palpably 
one  mind,  one  heart,  one  spirit — almost  alicays  in 
one  ijlace,  till  they  seemed,  even  to  their  neigh- 
bors, how  much  more  to  themselves,  inseparable 
the  one  from  the  other !  She  was  eyes  and  ears 
and  feet  and  hands  to  him.  He  was  head  and 
heart  and  soul  and  spirit  to  her.  Each  was  the 
other's  life — each  the  other's  higher,  better,  dearer 
self  AVho  can  conceive  the  pang,  the  tvreiich  when 
such  a  couple  are  separated  —  who  imagine  the 
blessedness  of  a  speedy,  perfect  and  perpetual  re- 
union in  heaven ! 

Mr.  Williston's  relation  to  his  brothers  was  beauti- 
ful ;  his  affection  for  them  was  very  tender.  Samuel 
resembled  his  mother;  Nathan  is  the  living  image 
of  his  father ;  Payson  was  like  and  yet  strangely 
unlike   both.      And   it    seemed    as   if  the    spirits   of 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE.  81 

the  parents  hovered  over  the  brothers  whenever 
they  met,  and  drew  them  towards  each  other  with 
a  more  than  fraternal  love.  The  two  brothers  who 
have  deceased  were  as  unlike  each  other  in  their 
person,  manners  and  character  as  they  were  in 
their  ways  of  doing  good — the  one  ever  sowing 
seed  for  an  immediate  harvest,  the  other  planting 
trees  and  founding  institutions  for  many  generations. 
It  was  beautiful  to  hear  them  rally  each  other  on 
their  differences  and  their  peculiarities,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  see  how  manifestly  they  sought  the 
same  end  in  different  ways,  and,  although  person- 
ally unlike,  they  were  one  in  spirit.  Lovely  and 
pleasant  in  their  lives,  in  death  'they  were  not 
long  divided.  But,  methinks,  the  happiness  of  the 
two  brothers  will  not  be  quite  perfect  till  the  third 
has  joined  them  in  the  better  land. 

Mr.  Williston  had  a  healthy  and  hearty  affection 
for  his  native  place.  I  fear  his  fellow -townsmen 
do  not  realize  how  much  he  loved  it,  nor  fully  ap- 
preciate how  much  he  has  done  for  it.  I  suspect 
they  do  not  know,  as  well  as  I  do,  how  near  they 
came  to  losing  him.  He  believed  he  might  become 
richer,  he  hesitated  for  a  time  w^hether  he  might 
not  also  be  more  useful,  to  found  Williston  Semin- 
ary somewhere  else,  and  himself  go  with  it.  After 
11 


82  COMMEMORATIVE    DISCOURSE. 

much  prayerful  aud  anxious  deliberation,  he  decided 
to  remain;  and  love  for  the  place  of  his  birth  was 
one,  and  not  the  smallest,  of  the  weights  that  turned 
the  scale.  He  found  Easthampton  a  mere  hamlet, 
with  an  old  meetino;-house  on  the  common  and  a 
few  poor  farms  scattered  around.  He  left  it  one 
of  the  richest  and  most  beautiful  towns  in  Hamp- 
shire County,  a  great  educational  and  manufacturing 
center,  with  beautiful  farm-houses,  (villas  they  might 
almost  be  called,)  and  several  model  villages  clus- 
terino"  about  eleo-ant  churches  and  a  model  sem- 
inary  of  learning.  He  turned  its  very  brooks  into 
silver  and  its  sands  to  gold — not,  however,  the  gold 
and  silver  of  the  miser,  but  that  of  the  Latin 
poet,  which  shines  only  by  its  use.  The  town 
will  be  known  in  history  as  his  birthplace. 
Strangers  will  visit  the  spot  where  he  was  born, 
the  house  in  which  he  lived  and  died,  and  the  grave 
in  which  he  was  buried — he  who  founded  Williston 
Seminary,  and  saved  Amherst  College,  and  lived 
and  acquired  wealth  only  to  glorify  God  and  do 
good  to  men.  And  not  only  the  seminary,  but  the 
town,  Avill  be  the  monument  of  Samuel  Wihiston. 
Eeligion  was  the  controlling  principle  of  Mr. 
Williston's  life.  The  editor  of  the  daily  morning 
newspaper  of  our   valley    speaks  of  the    objects  of 


COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE.  83 

his  life  as  two :  "  The  making  of  money  and  the 
serving  of  God."  That  is  not,  perhaps,  wide  of 
the  mark.  But  he  himself,  I  am  sure,  would  have 
preferred  another  way  of  stating  it.  In  his  own 
consciousness  his  object  was  one,  viz.,  the  serving 
of  God  by  the  making  of  money.  That  which 
the  London  Times  said  of  Mr,  Peabody  may  with 
equal  truth  and  emphasis  be  said  of  Mr.  Willis- 
ton  :  "  He  did  not  become  charitable  because  he 
had  become  rich,  but  he  became  rich  that  he  might 
be  charitable."  But  with  the  former  charity  was 
an  end,  while  with  the  latter  even  charity  was 
chiefly  a  means  to  please  and  honor  God.  Charity 
with  him  was  the  fruit  of  Christian  piety.  Hu- 
mility, reverence,  worship  and  obedience  were  also 
marked  characteristics  of  his  religion.  He  feared 
God  and  kept  his  commandments.  He  was  emi- 
nently conscientious.  He  was  anxious — literally 
and  emphatically  anxious,  to  know  and  do  his  whole 
duty.  He  was  inflexibly  resolved  on  doing  right. 
His  theology  was  that  of  the  Puritans  and  the  Pil- 
grim fathers.  Like  them  his  religion  Avas  cast  in 
the  mould  of  the  Old  Testament.  The  faith,  hope, 
love  and  joy  of  the  gospel  were  not  wanting,  but 
they  were  less  conspicuous.  Yet  he  believed  in 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  with  all  his  heart  and  loved 


84  COMMEMORATIVE     DISCOURSE. 

him  supremely.  He  never  doubted  the  truth  of 
Christiauity,  the  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures,  the 
doctrines  of  evangelical  religion,  the  divinity  of 
Christ  and  his  power  to  save  the  chief  of  sinners. 
He  only  doubted  his  own  personal  relations  to 
Christ  and  the  great  salvation,  or  as  he  would  have 
expressed  it,  his  personal  acceptance.  Of  this  he 
wanted  assurance.  This,  however,  seems  to  have 
been  given  him,  in  good  measure,  as  he  drew 
near  his  end.  "  I  think  I  am  going  through  safe — 
indeed,  I  think  I  may  say,  I  know  I  am."  "If  there 
is  anything  I  hate  it  is  sin ;  and  I  know  I  love  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  his  cause."  "I  am  in  my 
heavenly  Father's  hands,  and  he  will  do  that  which 
is  right  and  best  for  me."  These  were  amono;  his 
last  utterances. 

He  died  Saturday,  July  18th,  and  was  buried  Mon- 
day, July  20tli,  from  his  own  house,  which  was 
filled  with  the  friends  and  distinguished  strangers, 
while  the  people  of  the  town  crowded  the  lawn, 
at  the  doors  and  beneath  the  windows,  mourners 
all,  to  express  their  sympathy  with  the  family,  to 
bemoan  their  own  loss  and  to  do  honor  to  his 
memory. 

Tiie  richest  legacy  he  has  left  us  is  his  charac- 
ter and    his    example.     Happy    will    it   be    for    his 


COMMEMOEATIVE    DISCOURSE.  85 

family  and  friends,  his  neighbors  and  acquaint- 
ances, if  they  tread  in  the  footsteps  of  his  faith 
and  good  works.  It  behooves  the  trustees  of  the 
institutions  which  he  has  founded  to  be  faithful 
to  their  trust  and  keep  and  build  them  up  on  the 
foundations  which  he  has  laid.  He  loved  them 
as  his  children  and  provided  for  them  as  his  heirs; 
it  is  our  duty  and  privilege  to  care  for  them  as 
wards  and  to  cherish  them  as  if  they  were  our 
own  daughters.  The  teachers  and  pupils  of  these 
seminaries  should  never  forget  his  answer — so  often 
repeated  by  his  lips  and  so  w^ell  illustrated  in  his 
W'hole  life — to  the  first  question  in  religion  and 
the  highest  question  in  philosophy :  What  is  the 
chief  end  of  man  ?  He  believed  w^ith  all  his  heart 
that  his  chief  end  and  the  chief  end  of  every  man 
is  "to  glorify  God  and  enjoy  him  forever."  He 
has  taught  the  rich  the  right  use  of  money  and 
the  wisdom  of  being  their  own  executors.  And 
we  may  all  learn  from  him  the  beauty  and  the 
secret  of  a  truly  noble  life. 


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